Optical properties of photonic crystals on textiles

In order to develop a fast and efficient method to produce structural colors on textiles, the structural colored textiles were successfully prepared. The formation mechanism of photonic crystal on textiles was proposed. The photonic crystals with structural color on textiles were fabricated by allowing a colloidal suspension of SiO₂ to deposit on textile fabrics through gravitational sedimentation. It was proved that the structural colors on polyester fabrics could be modulated by the size of colloidal microspheres, and the decrease in diameters of colloidal microspheres resulted in the blue-shift of structure color on the polyester fabrics. These results were well in accordance with Bragg’s law. The photonic band gap position of photonic crystals on polyester fabric was consistently confirmed by reflectance spectra of structural color. It is known that to form photonic crystals on textiles using gravitational sedimentation technology is an efficient and promising method on green printing and packaging industries.