Recent advances in environmentally friendly structural colored fabrics

Colors originating from the way that light is scattered and diffracted by random or periodic structures are called structural colors. Photonic crystals that are periodic at the scale of the wavelength of visible light exhibit structural colors, so that they have been studied as supplements of dyes to dye fabrics. Compared with dyes, photonic crystals show excellent material diversity and environmental friendliness. However, their structural colors usually exhibit two drawbacks, i.e. low saturation and poor colorfastness. This review focused on structural colored fabrics. The color saturation and colorfastness are two important aspects of structural colored fabrics and their improvement strategies are first summarized. Then, the dyeing methods, and applications of structural colored fabrics are discussed in turn. This tutorial review aims to provide insight into structural colored fabrics with high saturation and colorfastness, further promote the research progress in their functionalization, and ultimately broaden their applications in intelligent wear, anti-counterfeiting and camouflage, energy storage and conversion, and other fields.