Abstract:

Some colors in nature are structural colors with very fine structures at the micrometer or nanometer scale. These structural colors are usually shiny and change with the angle of view, such as the color of butterflies' wings, the color of birds' feathers, the surface of sea shell and beetle, etc. Due to the advantages of fastness, environmental friendliness, and iridescent effect, structural color has a broad application prospect in display, decoration and anti-counterfeiting fields. In this experiment, a green and simple method was used to obtain the monodisperse silica nanoparticles by simply mixing cheap and readily available ethyl orthosilicate with ammonia hydroxide. By changing the ethyl orthosilicate to ammonia hydroxide ratio, the particle size of silica nanoparticles can be tuned, so that suspension inks with different structural colors can be obtained. The resulted silica nanoparticles can be directly used for writing or drawing structural color patterns, and are expected to be used in low-cost color pigment preparation.

Key words: Photonic crystal, Silica microsphere, Structural color