Facile Access to High Solid Content Monodispersed Microspheres via Dual-Component Surfactants Regulation towards High-Performance Colloidal Photonic Crystals.

Monodispersed microspheres play a major role in optical science and engineering, providing ideal building blocks for structural color materials. However, method towards high solid content (HSC) monodispersed microspheres has remained a key hurdle. Herein, we demonstrated a facile access to harvest monodispersed microspheres based on the emulsion polymerization mechanism, where anionic and nonionic surfactants were employed to achieve the electrostatic and steric dual-stabilization balance in a synergistic manner. Monodispersed poly(styrene-butyl acrylate-methacrylic acid) (P(St-BA-MAA)) colloidal latex with 55 wt.% HSC was achieved, which shows an enhanced self-assembly efficiency of 280% comparing with the low solid content (10 wt.%) latex. In addition, Ag-coated colloidal photonic crystal (Ag@CPC) coating with near-zero refractive index is achieved, presenting the characteristics of metamaterials. And a 11-fold photoluminescence (PL) emission enhancement of CdSe@ZnS quantum dots (QDs) is realized by the Ag@CPC metamaterial coating. Taking advantage of high assembly efficiency, easily large-scale film-forming of the 55 wt.% HSC microspheres latex, we could easily produce robust Ag@CPC metamaterial coatings for passive cooling. The coating demonstrates excellent thermal insulation performance with theoretical cooling power of 30.4 W/m 2 , providing practical significance for scalable colloidal photonic crystal (CPC) architecture coatings in passive cooling. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.