Fabrication Of Colloidal Photonic Crystal Structure-based Functional System

Photonic crystal structure-based stimuli-responsive material is a new typeadvanced functional polymers. Due to its distinct advantages, such as rapidresponse and self-reporting, responsive photonic materials become increasinglyimportant in the area of chemical and biological sensing. However, for thesuccessful formation of these photonic materials with desirable functions andmechanical strength, each fabrication is strongly dependent on the screening andarduous synthesis of functional monomers as well as the optimization ofpolymerization conditions which is an arduous process. Furthermore, thedeficiency of these photonic polymers is obvious, since a special receptor or afunctional molecule needs to be introduced during polymerization for a specificfunction. The molecular-imprinting technique provides a promising alternativefor the preparation of functional materials for specific recognition. However, anumber of factors must be considered for the successful design of MIP. How tooptimize related parameters is a challenge. In order to solve the problemsencountered in the fabrication and application of responsive photonic materials,in this dissertation, firstly, based on azide-containing clickable inverse opal, astrategy for efficiently fabricating functional photonic materials was developed;Secondly, molecularly imprinted photonic film was rational designed assisted bychemometrics; finally, a signal self-reporting sensor array was fabricateddirectly based on the cross-reactive molecularly imprinted photonic film. Themain contents and results are summarized as follows:1. Clickable inverse opal was fabricated. Three types of ethynylatedcompounds (pH-responsive, electroactive and bioactive) were attached toinverse opaline films affording corresponding functional materials. Thisstrategy provides a useful platform for developing functional photonic materials;2. Assisted by chemometrics, rational design of molecularly imprinted photonicfilm was realized. Response surface methodology (RSM) based on centralcomposite design (CCD) was used to find the key factor playing more importantrole in the fabrication of the polymer and predict optimum condition with limited number of experiments. This method provides a theoretical guidance forrational design of a photonic molecular imprinting system;3. Molecularlyimprinted photonic array was fabricated. Based on this array, a method for rapidsensing of polybrominated diphenylethers was developed. It is expected that thiswork can significantly provide a new method for fabrication of sensor array anda new analytical methods for brominated flame retardants (BFRs);4. Based onthe combination of molecularly imprinting, photonic crystal andmicromolding-in capillary techniques, a differential microarray sensor wasdesigned to detect four herbicides and pesticides and their mixtures at tracelevel with100%identification accuracy. This microarray sensor is expected topave the way for building new sensory system with high performance.Stimuli-responsive photonic materials have attracted considerable interestdue to their unique optical properties and functionality. Thus, we expect that thework presented in this thesis could provide a convenient and efficient strategyfor the development of functional materials towards chemical sensingapplications.