Photo-Chromeleon: Re-Programmable Multi-Color Textures Using Photochromic Dyes

In most situations in the real world, once an object is fabricated, the color is permanent and cannot be changed again. For the Emerging Technologies exhibit, we will present a technology to create re-programmable multi-color textures that are made from a single material only. This technology is based on photochromic dyes that can switch their appearance from transparent to colored when exposed to the light of a certain wavelength. By mixing cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY) photochromic dyes into a single solution and leveraging the different absorption spectra of each dye, we can control each color channel in the solution separately. Our approach can transform single-material fabrication techniques, such as coating, into high-resolution multi-color processes. In addition, as the color-changing process is fully reversible, users can recolor objects multiple times.