Structural Color due to Self‐assembly

Structural colors are all kinds of colors produced by the microscopic structures corresponding to the light wavelength through interference, diffraction, scattering, and other ways to reflect the incident light at a specific wavelength and in a specific direction. Structural color materials (SCMs) have been widely used in environmental sensing, intelligent display, information coding, anti-counterfeiting, fabric coloring, smart window, and clinical medicine due to their unique optical manipulation. Self-assembly of nanoparticles provides effective approaches for the fabrication of functional SCMs. This paper focuses on several types of the self-assembling approach of SCMs, including the assembly mechanism and coloring mechanism, referring to evaporation self-assembly, membrane separation-assisted assembly, air–liquid interface self-assembly, oil–oil interface self-assembly, oil–water interface self-assembly, controlled micellization self-assembly, layered hydrogels self-assembly, spray-coating self-assembly, unidirectional rubbing self-assembly, edge-induced rotational shearing self-assembly, screen printing self-assembly, magnetic-induced self-assembly, photoinduced self-assembly, atomic layer deposition self-assembly, physical vapor deposition self-assembly, and surface wrinkling. Understanding the self-assembly method of nanoparticles is helpful to the development of functional SCMs, especially the construction of large-area structure colors and the preparation of templates for functional materials.