Fig. 1: Overview of photonic LC materials for making structural color actuators and the corresponding mechanisms of actuation and structural color change.
Left: LC with chiral photonic structure, including CLC, CNC and BPLC. The pitch/lattice spacing of photonic LCs increases when exposed to stimuli, causing dimensional and structural color changes. Middle: LC with opal/inverse opal structures; the spheres represent nanoparticles or air voids. Right: LC with alternating layers of two media with distinct refractive indexes. The disorder change of the LC when exposed to stimuli causes anisotropic deformation, leading to lattice spacing and structural color changes. Δλmax represents the maximum structural color shift achieved in the reported literature
