Bio-Inspired Camouflage Skin with Photonic Crystal Structure and Size-Confinement Effect

Camouflage skin holds immense potential for a variety of advanced applications, such as artificial intelligence, soft robotics, and flexible/wearable electronics. Currently, most existing materials for constructing camouflage skin are mainly based on inorganic materials with an inverse opal scaffold, which significantly limits their further development because of the poor mechanical properties and environmental instability. Inspired by rana slvaticas, a new type of camouflage skin based on one-dimentional (1D) photonic crystal (PC) gel is designed and synthesized, which combines the advantages of 1D PC structures with 3D flexible gels in a single skin device. Taking advantage of the unique structures, the resulting camouflage skins demonstrated attractive properties, including excellent mechanical performance, self-adaptive camouflage capabilities, and long-term stability in ambient conditions. Specifically, the camouflage skin can quickly recognize and match the background by modulating the optical signals of external stimuli. The synergistic effect of the glycerol, the dodecyl glycerol itaconate (DGI), and the nano-space structures altogether contribute to the outstanding long-term environmental stability of the camouflage skin. Overall, by combining the bio-inspired concept and molecular engineering strategy, camouflage skin based on PC gels is synthesized, which greatly enriched the application and development in the smart skins field. Inspired by rana slvaticas, an artificial camouflage skin is explored based on photonic crystal gels by introducing 1D photonic crystal structure into gels, which merge both the advantages of photonic crystal structures and flexible gels. The obtained photonic crystal gels exhibited excellent self-adaptive camouflage functions of fast background recognition and matching, through modulation of optical signals under external stimuli. image