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Angle-Independent Structural Color in Stretchable Materials

We engineer iridescent elastomers with tailored surface roughness to achieve vivid, structural colour that appears uniform from all viewing angles—opening new possibilities in sensing and smart materials.

This project explores the development of structurally coloured, stretchable materials using Lippmann photography and photosensitive elastomers. These materials function as distributed Bragg reflectors due to internal refractive index modulation. To overcome their natural angle-dependent iridescence, we introduce and model surface roughness using a generalized Harvey-Shack approach. This modification enables the tuning of scattering behavior to achieve angle-independent colour appearance. The result is a versatile, flexible material platform with potential applications in colourimetric sensing, soft robotics, and adaptive optics.

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