A New Soluble Prodot-Based Polymers and its Electrochromic Device with Yellow-to-Green Color Switching Towards Camouflage Application

Abstract

Yellow-to-green electrochromic color switching plays a key role for the intelligent adaptive camouflage under the visible light environment in future military camouflage applications. Here we designed and synthesized a new soluble electrochromic conjugated polymer pDPTD, mainly based on perylo[1,12-bcd]thiophene and the novel ProDOT groups. The pDPTD polymer displayed a yellow-to-green electrochromism with large optical contrast and fast switching time. Based on pDPTD polymer film, a yellow-to-green electrochromic device was achieved, showing an orange-yellow color at -0.4 V with L*a*b* color coordinate of (88.5, 18.5, 34.2), a pale green color at 0.7 V with L*a*b* color coordinate of (85.6, -4.8, 11.5), together with a large optical contrast of 43.5% and fast switching time of 2.4/3.2 s. These results indicated that polymer pDPTD could serve as potential electrochromic materials for yellow/green-system camouflage applications.

Keywords: ProDOT, Conjugated polymer, Electrochomic camouflage, Electrochromic device