Development of bright and low angle dependent structural color coatings via electrophoretic deposition with variable voltage

Abstract In recent years, structural colored coatings have become a hot spot for research because of the advantages of colorfast and eco-friendly. Nevertheless, it is still a great challenge to balance the conflict among color, luminosity, saturation and angle dependence of the coatings. In this work, we used electrophoretic deposition (EPD) technique with variable voltage assembly to deposit polydopamine coated polystyrene nanoparticles (PS@PDA NPs) with poly (dimethyldiallylammonium chloride) (PDDA). By varying the voltage of the EPD duration, structural colored coatings with hierarchical structure were prepared, which exhibited bright colors with low angle dependence. More importantly, the films could be coated on curved surfaces and other complicated shapes, which would have many practical applications in the future.