Liquid photonic crystal (LPC) is a promising new material in the field of sensing, display, printing, and coating due to its unique fluidity, metastability, and reversibility in colloidal assembly. However, it is a big challenge to prepare LPC materials in an efficient, controllable, and eco-friendly way. In this work, an electrically-driven colloid concentration process was developed for the efficient synthesis of LPC. The key for the synthesis was that the electrophoretic process produced a locally concentrated but “agglomeration-free” colloidal solution, which spontaneously turned to LPC after being kept standing for a few minutes. The synthesis possessed good universality and reproducibility for LPCs composed of different particles and solvents. Its efficiency could be improved by tuning the particles’ surface charge, the dielectric constant and viscosity of the solvent, as well as the external field conditions. More importantly, it could be developed into a large-scale and green process without chemical wastes compared to the previous synthetic methods.
- Open Access
- Article
Efficient Synthesis of Liquid Photonic Crystal by Electrically-Driven Colloid Concentration
- Xiaodong Lu 1, †,
- Huimin Zhu 1, †,
- Sheng Chen 1,
- Ximeng Lv 1,
- Jianping Ge 1, 2, *
Author Information
Received: 09 Jan 2025 | Revised: 19 Feb 2025 | Accepted: 21 Feb 2025 | Published: 28 Feb 2025
Abstract
Graphical Abstract
Keywords
liquid photonic crystal | electrically-driven concentration | agglomeration-free | colloidal assembly | green synthesis
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How to Cite
Lu, X.; Zhu, H.; Chen, S.; Lv, X.; Ge, J. Efficient Synthesis of Liquid Photonic Crystal by Electrically-Driven Colloid Concentration. Materials and Interfaces 2025, 2 (1), 46–56. https://doi.org/10.53941/mi.2025.100005.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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