Printing Flowers? Custom-Tailored Photonic Cellulose Films with Engineered Surface Topography
42 Pages Posted: 24 Jan 2019 Publication Status: Published
More...Abstract
Wrought by nature’s wondrous hand, surface topographies are discovered on all length scales in living creatures with variety of functions. Inspired by the floral striations, here we developed a scalable means of fabricating custom-tailored photonic cellulose films that contained cholesteric organization and microscopic wrinkly surface topography. The freestanding films were prepared by moulding cellulose nanocrystal ink onto an oriented wrinkle template through evaporation-assisted nanoimprinting lithography, yielding morphology-induced light scattering at short wavelength as well as optically tuneable structural colour that derived from helical cellulose matrix. Moreover, this wrinkled surface relief on cholesteric cellulose films could be precisely controlled, enabling engineered printing of microscopic patterned images. These bio-inspired films offer a convenient opportunity for the production of coupled photonic crystals which may be of value in advanced optical devices.
Keywords: Cellulose Nanocrystals, Liquid Crystal, Surface Topography, Nanoimprinting, Floral-mimetic Structure
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