Facile synthesis of m-phenylenediamine-based nanospheres coated with poly(m-phenylenediamine) for building bright iridescent structural color

As significant species of artificial photonic crystals, spherical crystals have attracted great attention. However, the variation of nanospheres for building crystalline arrays is still insufficient for large-scale application and the diversity of them remains to be increased. The enhancement of structural color visibility is another noteworthy subject and fabricating composite particles containing black materials to eliminate the disturbance of scattering and background light is an effective method. Herein, a new monodisperse m-phenylenediamine-based polymer sphere was facilely synthesized as structural color material and further coated by a poly(m-phenylenediamine) black shell for saturation enhancement. Moreover, for the high compatibility with other materials and easy preparation of poly(m-phenylenediamine), the coating procedure was quite effortless and efficient. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to synthesize such a monodisperse nanosphere from aromatic diamine and use poly(m-phenylenediamine) as stray light absorber to wrap the monodispersed nanosphere still with high uniformity. Such designation provides new candidate structural color material and optional black additive for wider applications on spherical crystals. (paper)