Preparation of PS@PDA amorphous photonic structural colored fabric with vivid color and robust mechanical properties based on rapid polymerization of dopamine

Abstract The structural colors have aroused great interest because of their high brightness and high saturation characteristics, meanwhile they do not require dyes and do not fade. Among them, structural color of amorphous photonic structure (APS) are widely used in the textile field due to their non-iridescent effects. Here, a layer of polydopamine(PDA) was coated on the surface of polystyrene(PS) nanospheres to prepare core-shell structure nanospheres (PS@PDA) through a copper-catalyzed rapid polymerization of dopamine (DA). Further, in order to obtain the structural colored fabric, the prepared black nanospheres are coated on the cotton fabric by a gravity deposition method. Although the fabric background is white, the structural colored coating can exhibit excellent color saturation and does not change with the angle. The obtained APS film has no selectivity to the substrate. In addition, the mussel-inspired high-viscosity PDA shell can improve the adhesion and mechanical strength of PS nanospheres. The structural colored fabric still maintains vivid color after being immersed in water for 12 days or washed for 90 minutes in a washing test. Moreover, the structural colored fabric exhibits good bending resistance or abrasion resistance and can withstand 50 repeated folding and 10 repeated friction tests without obvious cracks or peeling. This research work will provide a high-efficiency and low-energy-consumption idea for preparing high-quality structural colored fabrics with vivid colors and strong mechanical strength.