Cellulose Based Photonic Materials Displaying Direction Modulated Photoluminescence.

Photonic materials featuring simultaneous iridescence and light emission are an attractive alternative for designing novel optical devices. The luminescence study of a new optical material that integrates light emission and iridescence through liquid crystal self-assembly of cellulose nanocrystal-template silica approach is herein presented. These materials containing Rhodamine 6G were obtained as freestanding composite films with a chiral nematic organization. The scanning electron microscopy confirms that the cellulose nanocrystal film structure comprises multi-domain Bragg reflectors and the optical properties of these films can be tuned through changes in the relative content of silica/cellulose nanocrystals. Moreover, the incorporation of the light-emitting compound allows a complementary control of the optical properties. Overall, such findings demonstrated that the photonic structure plays the role of direction-dependent inner-filter, causing selective suppression of the light emitted with angle-dependent detection.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2021 Santos, Maturi, Pecoraro, Barud, Lima, Ferreira, Carlos and Ribeiro.)