Functional structural color dye with excellent UV protection property

With the rapid improvement of people's living quality, the requirements for textiles are not only limited to the basic demands of warmth keeping, florid, fashion and UV protection are also badly needed. Brilliant structural color possesses many unique advantages compared with traditional dyes or pigments and has shown great potential in replacing the traditional dyes and pigments. Besides, the structural color is usually self-assembled by latex spheres with unique diameters and refractive index, therefore the building block has its own advantages to be modified and functionalized, which may have the possibility to solve problems of multiply functional dyes mentioned above. This article reported a kind of functional structure color dye with excellent ultraviolet (UV) rays protection property, which was fabricated through the self assembly of poly-(styrene-methyl methacrylate-acrylic acid)-avobenzone core-shell latex sphere, in which a commonly used UV absorber avobenzone was well encapsulated and sealed. The encapsulation of avobenzone into latex sphere ensured the structure color fantastic UV protection property, and meanwhile avoided the direct contact dermatitis of UV absorber to skin and allergens, meanwhile the as prepared structure color dye possessed good color visibility. The functional structure color dye with excellent UV protection property will provide a new perspective for the next generation functional dyes and pigments.