Fabrication of cotton fabrics with both bright structural colors and strong hydrophobicity

In order to achieve the coloration and hydrophobicity of cotton fabrics through one-step processing, this study utilized a vertical deposition method to fabricate polystyrene (PSt) photonic crystals on cotton fabrics. The morphological changes of cotton fabrics, the arrangement of photonic crystals and structural color effects, and the changes of hydrophobicity of cotton fabrics were investigated. Moreover, the possible mechanism of hydrophobicity was proposed. The results shows that the original gaps existed between adjacent fibers of cotton fabrics are obviously filled by the three-dimensional photonic crystals after the vertical deposition, the resultant cotton fabrics presented bright and iridescent structural colors and strong hydrophobicity. Specifically, a kind of multi-layered structure of water droplets-photonic crystal layers-fabrics was essentially presented, and the strong hydrophobicity was due to the PSt microspheres that made up the photonic crystals itself had good hydrophobicity and the own structure of photonic crystals was rough.