Bioinspired multichannel colorful encryption through kirigami activating grating

Xiaoyu Hou; Florian Vogelbacher; Xintao Lai; Kaixuan Li; Yanlin Song; Mingzhu Li

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2023.01.028

Bioinspired multichannel colorful encryption through kirigami activating grating

Sci Bull (Beijing). 2023 Feb 15;68(3):276-283. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2023.01.028. Epub 2023 Jan 20.

Authors

Xiaoyu Hou¹, Florian Vogelbacher², Xintao Lai¹, Kaixuan Li¹, Yanlin Song¹, Mingzhu Li³

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Green Printing, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; School of Chemical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
² Key Laboratory of Green Printing, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Green Printing, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; School of Chemical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Mold of the Ministry of Education, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450002, China. Electronic address: mingzhu@iccas.ac.cn.

PMID: 36702683
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2023.01.028

Abstract

Optical encryption, exploiting degrees of freedom of light as parameters to encode and decode information, plays an indispensable role in our daily life. Responsive structural color materials can give real-time visible feedback to external stimuli and provide ideal candidates for optical encryption. However, the development of existing responsive structural color materials is hindered by poor repeatability and long feedback time. Meanwhile, there are only few strategies to exploit structural colors in multichannel information encryption. Herein, bioinspired by the structural color variation due to a change in angle arising from the movement of animal's scales or feathers, we developed a general multichannel information encryption strategy using a two-dimensional deformable kirigami arranging orientations of the grating arrays by design. The kirigami grating sheet shows rapid, repeatable, and programmable color change. This strategy utilizes the topological space deformation to guide the change of optical property, which suggests new possibilities for spatial and spectral encryption as well as mechano-sensing and camouflage.

Keywords: Color change; Encryption; Grating; Kirigami; Structural color.