Firefly-inspired Bipolar Information Indication System Actuated by White Light

Abstract

Abstract The indication of information in materials is widely used in our daily life, and optical encoding materials are ideal for information loading due to their easily readable nature and adjustable optical properties. However, most of them could only indicate one type of information, either changing or unchanging due to the mutual interference. Inspired by firefly, we present a noninterfering bipolar information indication system capable of indicating both changing and unchanging information. A photochemical afterglow material was incorporated into the photonic crystal matrix through high-throughput technique of shear-induced ordering technique, which can efficiently produce large-area photonic crystal films. The indication of changing and unchanging information is enabled by two different utilizations of white light by the afterglow material and photonic crystals, respectively, which overcomes the limitations of mutual interference. The consumption unit within the afterglow material can be tuned to match different degrees of light exposure, i.e., when tripling its concentration, the matching light exposure can increase from 3 to 39 J/cm2. As a proof of concept, this system was used to indicate the changing photodegradation level of mecobalamin (a photosensitive medicine) and unchanging intrinsic drug information with anti-counterfeiting functionality, which is a scalable and improved solution for information indication.