Structural Colors from Amyloid-Based Liquid Crystals

The helical periodicity and layered structure in cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) may be tuned to generate structural color according to the Bragg's law of diffraction. A wide range of natural-based materials such as condensed DNA, collagen, chitin, cellulose, and chiral biopolymers exhibit cholesteric phases with left-handed helixes and ensued structural colors. Here, the possibility of using amyloid CLCs is reported to prepare films with iridescent color reflection and opposite handedness. Right-handed CLCs assembled by left-handed amyloid fibrils are dried into layered structures with variable pitch controlled by the addition of glucose. Circularly polarized light with the same handedness of amyloid CLCs helix is reflected in the Bragg regime. Varying the drying speed leads to the switching between films with a rainbow-like color gradient and large area uniform color. It is confirmed that the origin of the colors derives from the layered structures of the amyloid CLCs, given the negligeable birefringence of the films, calculated from optical rotatory dispersion. These findings provide a facile approach to constructing biosourced cholesteric materials and introduce an original class of proteinaceous materials for the generation of structural colors from right-handed circularly polarized light. Amyloid cholesteric liquid crystals are used to prepare films with iridescent color reflection. The reflected light is circularly polarized with the same handedness of amyloid CLCs helix (right-handed) in the Bragg regime. Accelerating the drying speed leads to the formation of films with large area of uniform color.image

Automated summary

The helical periodicity and layered structure in cholesteric liquid crystals can generate structural color according to the Bragg's law of diffraction. This study reports the possibility of using amyloid cholesteric liquid crystals to prepare films with iridescent color reflection and opposite handedness. The color effects vary with the drying speed, and the color originates from the layered structures of the amyloid cholesteric liquid crystals.