Towards visual color display with fast electric field response: Highly chromatic and stable colloidal photonic crystal inks

There is an increasing demand towards reflective color display devices with high contrast as well as eye-protection function. To this point, colloidal photonic crystal inks have attracted intensive attentions in terms of their unique abilities to enable vivid color variation upon external stimuli. In this paper, the SiO2-propylene carbonate (PC)-trimethylolpropane ethoxylate triacrylate (ETPTA)-based resins e-ink has been developed to construct photonic crystal photomodulation devices, which can realize electrophoresis-driven modification of structural color. Specifically, it is found that the addition of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) plays a key role in improving coloration, ink rheology and electrochromic response time simultaneously for its special optical and electrical properties. This work may be helpful for the design of e-inks aiming at reflective displays.