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Interfacial Assembly of Amphiphilic Tiles for Reconfigurable Photonic Surfaces
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posted on 2019-11-19, 16:41 authored by Jong Bin Kim, Gun Ho Lee, Shin-Hyun KimNature has created photonic structures in cells and assembled
them to make photonic layers for a living. Inspired from nature, we
design amphiphilic photonic tiles and assemble them at air–water
interface to compose highly reconfigurable photonic layers. The photonic
tiles are prepared by photolithographically defining the shape of
the disc using a photocurable dispersion of repulsive particles. The
tiles are further treated by directional dry etching to selectively
render top and side surfaces of the discs hydrophobic. The amphiphilic
photonic tiles deform the air–water interface by gravity, which
causes a strong attractive force driven by capillarity. Therefore,
the tiles form two-dimensional (2D) dense-packing, which rapidly adapts
dynamic fluctuation and shape change of the interface, providing highly
reconfigurable photonic layers. In addition, the assembly can be transferred
into target solid surfaces through the Langmuir–Blodgett method
to make photonic coatings. Moreover, the amphiphilic tiles can be
assembled on the surface of water drops, forming a photonic shell
on liquid marbles which resembles photonic structures in nature. We
believe that our strategy based on a 2D tile assembly at the free
interface will provide a simple yet useful means to create photonic
layers on various purposes.