Chameleon-Inspired Mechanochromic Photonic Elastomer with Brilliant Structural Color and Stable Optical Response for Human Motion Visualization

Abstract

Flexible and stretchable electronic devices are indispensable parts of wearable devices. However, these electronics employ electrical transducing modes and lack the ability to visually respond to external stimuli, restricting their versatile application in the visualized human–machine interaction. Inspired by the color variation of chameleons’ skin, we developed a series of novel mechanochromic photonic elastomers (PEs) with brilliant structural colors and a stable optical response. Typically, these PEs with a sandwich structure were prepared by embedding PS@SiO2 photonic crystals (PCs)within the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer. Benefiting from this structure, these PEs exhibit not only bright structural colors, but also superior structural integrity. Notably, they possess excellent mechanochromism through lattice spacing regulation, and their optical responses are stably maintained even when suffering from 100 stretching–releasing cycles, showing superior stability and reliability and excellent durability. Moreover, a variety of patterned PEs were successfully obtained through a facile mask method, which provides great inspiration to create intelligent patterns and displays. Based on these merits, such PEs can be utilized as visualized wearable devices for detecting various human joint movements in real time. This work offers a new strategy for realizing visualized interactions based on PEs, showing huge application prospects in photonic skins, soft robotics, and human–machine interactions.