One-Pot Preparation of Physical Hydrogel-Based Photonic Crystal

Abstract

We developed a one-pot method for the fabrication of hydrogel-based photonic crystal (PC) materials. An array of monodisperse colloids was self-assembled within a polymer solution, which generates a visible light diffractable photonic mixture. This mixture was molded and gelated into a hydrogel PC material by freeze-thaw treatment. Drug release as well as the structure colour changing properties of the PC hydrogels were discussed, and the experiment results revealed that our one-pot design and the associated modification approach has potential in efficient fabrication of PC materials.