The architecture of the colloidal photonic crystals (CPCs) is of paramount importance to their functionality and applications. Nevertheless, the realization of CPCs with arbitrarily designed, volumetrically sophisticated structures at the macroscale remains challenging. In this work, a printable CPC ink was developed. By combining this ink with a digital light processing (DLP)-based three-dimensional (3D) printing system, we were able to fabricate the CPC superstructures featuring both digitally defined macroscale geometries and structural colors originating from the ordered structures at the sub-micron scale. Moreover, besides the arbitrarily adjustable and precisely designable architectures, the optical properties, mechanical performances, and stimuli-responsiveness of the printed objects could also be facilely tuned by the composition of the ink or the printing parameters of the DLP system. This technology endows us the ability to fabricate CPCs with a multitude of desirable functions as well as mimic the hierarchical structures and color-manipulation strategies of some creatures in nature, which paves the way for potentially broad applications in intelligent color displays, 3D integrated sensors, biomimetic color-morphing soft robots, and smart anti-counterfeiting labels, among others.

中文翻译：

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可 3D 打印的胶体光子晶体

胶体光子晶体（CPC）的结构对其功能和应用至关重要。然而，在宏观尺度上实现具有任意设计、体积复杂的结构的 CPC 仍然具有挑战性。在这项工作中，开发了一种可印刷的 CPC 墨水。通过将该墨水与基于数字光处理 (DLP) 的三维 (3D) 打印系统相结合，我们能够制造出具有数字定义的宏观几何形状和源自亚微米有序结构的结构颜色的 CPC 上部结构。规模。此外，除了可任意调节和精确设计的架构外，打印物体的光学特性、机械性能和刺激响应性也可以通过油墨的成分或DLP系统的打印参数来轻松调整。这项技术使我们能够制造具有多种所需功能的 CPC，并模仿自然界中某些生物的层次结构和颜色处理策略，这为智能彩色显示器、3D 集成传感器、仿生变色软机器人、智能防伪标签等。