Highly Flexible, Stretchable, and Tunable Optical Diffusers with Mechanically Switchable Wettability Surfaces.

Highly stretchable and super-hydrophobic photonics provides a new geometric degree of freedom for photonic system design and self-cleaning applications. Here, we describe the design and experimental realization of mechanically stretchable and tunable photonic diffusers. These intrinsically designed diffusers (based on periodic arrays of cylindrical lenslets and microtip) were made directly on elastomer material using laser ablation. The dimensions of both the tips and the lenslet arrays play a critical role in the distribution of illumination and wettability resistance. By stretching the diffusers mechanically along the lenslet arrays, diffusion angle tuning was achieved and also a reversible change between hydrophilic to super-hydrophobic states. These multifunctional diffusers constitute an important step toward integration with flexible materials or devices such as stretchable organic light-emitting diodes and polymer light-emitting diodes.

Introduction

Stretchable photonics and optoelectronics have been perceived over the past decade as an alternative technology for the realization of the next generation of optoelectronics and optomechanics applications. The use of advanced materials for adaptable photonic devices is of great significance across a wide range of sciences and technologies including material chemistry, soft matter physics, optics, electronics, and engineering.[1,2] Considering the mechanical flexibility in a photonic device, the technology has potentially enormous applications for optical imaging,[3] epidermal sensing,[4,5] light-emitting diodes (LEDs),[6,7] wearable strain sensors,[8,9] and bioinspired photonics.[10,11] Consequently, increasing the development of stretchable LEDs or organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that are suitable for integration with electronic tattoos or displays is of great interest[12] because such OLEDs can potentially lead to an increase in demand for stretchable optical components, such as optical diffusers. These diffusers would be useful, for example, in allowing the light to mix before entering the visible part of the display, resulting in more uniform and brighter displays without increasing the number of OLED lights.[13]

Optical diffusers are one of the most promising optical elements that can continuously process light beams directly and convey a diffraction of light for wearable biosensors,[14] intraluminal photodynamic therapy,[15] LEDs, and a wide variety of medical and electronic applications.[16] Optical diffusers made from glass, plastic, or fiber are not flexible, stretchable, soft, or super-hydrophobic devices[17,18] and have therefore gained significant attention. In contrast, the recent development of an optical diffuser based on a hydrogel film has provided the possibility of meeting these requirements for a stretchable element.[16] However, its working principle is only based on a swelling behavior of hydrogel from chemicals with a substantial limitation in properties, such as stiffness and physical contact.[16] This is because hydrogel photonic elements are relatively fragile against external stress and strain.[9] To date, there is a lack of research into how photonic diffusers respond to mechanical deformations. This is an issue because photonic devices need to be adapted for stretchable and flexible optoelectronic and optomechanical devices, which are becoming significantly more important.

Mechanical deformations are useful characteristics, particularly when employing thin photonic devices in advanced applications such as biorobotics and lab-on-chips.[19] The majority of photonic devices are fabricated from rigid or soft material on rigid substrate and cause an inherent mismatch for applications that should be stretchable such as human skin,[5] or flexible such as OLEDs.[20] The transparency of rigid material, such as glass, in a visible spectrum, tends to be slightly less than an elastomer material, thus affecting the light efficiency.[21] On the other hand, elastomer materials achieve four typical aspects of wettability: super-hydrophobicity, controllable water adhesion, anisotropic sliding, and anisotropic wetting when structured with periodic patterned surfaces.[22] A practical approach is to fabricate photonic diffusers directly on the stretched elastomer substrates and release it later to reduce the dimensions of the formed structures. There have been several reports where surface wrinkles were induced on elastomer materials in response to applied mechanical compression beyond certain critical strains.[23−25] Even in some cases when mechanically stretched, a small residual strain led to the formation of wrinkles.[26] These structures on the elastomer materials created a waved pattern across a stretched axis. For this reason, many optimizations are required to make reusable and strain-resistant optical diffusers.

Here, we demonstrate a new route for the fabrication of optical diffusers from stretchable elastomeric materials which present mechanical stretchability, super-hydrophobicity, and tunable optical properties while maintaining their desirable optical property. The development process pursued a range of initial designs and fabricating final applications. The surface structures were directly fabricated using laser ablation on a stretched planar elastomer substrate, to enable the relative reduction in the feature size once the substrate had been released. These high-relief structures responded to the mechanical strain by tuning the photonic and wettability properties. Also, the elastomeric material allows fabricating thin devices with a high-strain response. Finally, the relation of the droplet contact angles and the optical angular diffusion, with the stretchability characteristic was systematically investigated along the applied strain.

Results and Discussion

Device Design and Fabrication

Silicone encapsulants including two liquids, base and curing agent, were selected to provide highly stretchable polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer substrate. When liquids are thoroughly mixed and poured into a Petri dish (Figure a,i), the mixture subsequently cured to a flexible elastomer substrate, which is suited for fabrication of photonic devices. The chemical structure of the elastomer is represented in Figure a,ii using the structural formula and molecular graphic. This material is a highly transparent, elastic, and thermal insulator. The elastomer substrate was stretched under a mechanical strain of about 66%, and the laser engraving was utilized to fabricate the diffuser structures (Figure a,iii). These high-relief structures were fabricated in the form of an array of cylindrical lenses separated with micron scaled tips, which produced enhanced scattering. To understand the structure formed on the stretched elastomer, the design model was prepared and calculated based on strain law: ε = δ/D where ε is a nominal strain, δ is a change in lens diameter, and D is lens diameter after being released. Because the fabrication was produced on the stretched substrate and due to elastomer instability, low strain deformation was selected. Figure a,v shows the stretched lens diameter (DT) at an applied strain of 66%, which is similar to the laser engraving spot size (70 μm). On the basis of calculation, if the sample was engraved with a cylindrical lens at a different applied strain, the lens diameter will be changed (Figure b). This allows the production of a smaller fabricated feature once the strain is released and thus reduces the engraved feature diameter (D) to around 43 μm (Figure a,vi). Thus, by changing the applied strain it is possible to directly produce various lens diameters, without requiring any extra optics to change the laser engraving focal spot sizes (Figure c).

Figure 1

(a) Photonic diffuser design and fabrication (i) producing elastomer material, (ii) structural chemical formula and model of elastomer molecule, (iii) schematic illustration of laser ablation on stretched elastomer for producing a photonic diffuser with its simulated structure in (v), (iv) the diffuser after releasing and its simulated structure in (vi). (b) The relation between the stretched lens diameter (DT) during fabrication and changing strain and (c) their effect on the lens diameter (D) when releasing the applied strain.

A series of diffuser elements were fabricated on a stretched elastomer substrate using a rapid and direct laser ablation system (see Supporting Information, Figure S3a). This system provides a Gaussian laser beam profile for creating lenslets-like lateral periodic structures, with high repeatability and the possibility of producing large-area diffusers. To optimize the laser ablation process, three parameters are of fundamental importance: laser beam spot size, laser power, and dots per inch (number of laser scans per inch upon one axis). The beam size and power have a direct relationship with the cylindrical lens’ diameter and its depth, while the dpi affects the periodicity of the cylindrical lenses and the microtip’s width. This is usually the longest part of the process with the laser speed was maitained as a constant at 750 mm·s–1, to ensure consistency of ablation in all the samples. Therefore, the fabricated diffusers were intended to have a similar cylindrical lens diameter with two different identical microtip widths (4.5 and 2 μm) on a pattern area of 5 × 5 mm2, achieving functionalities of optical diffusion. These identical microtips were produced using 333 and 500 dots per inch (dpi) parameter, respectively. Furthermore, the depth of cylindrical lenses was produced into a variety of dimensions by controlling the laser power (4.5–6 W). As the power increased, the depth greatly increased and produced a parabolic shape. After a fabricated diffuser was released (unstretched), the structured surface shrank producing smaller surface features.

Topographical Characteristics

The surface characteristics of two stretched diffuser elements (with 66% applied strain) had quite similar lenslet diameters but definitely different tip widths. The observed first and second stretched diffuser samples were obtained with tip widths of 4.5 and 2 μm, respectively (Figure a,i, c,i). These surface structures were measured orthogonally across the cylindrical lenslet axis to determine their surface roughness and profile. The average roughness (Ra) values were obtained to be 1.92 for the first stretched diffuser and 1.62 μm for second stretched diffusers (Figure aiii, ciii). The surfaces roughness is directly influenced by the depth of the lenslets, which is affected by the laser ablation power (see Figure S1, Supporting Information).

Figure 2

Surface characteristics of two diffuser samples. Optical images of two diffuser elements under stretched and released conditions with different tip widths. (a) The stretched first diffuser, (b) the released first diffuser, (c) the stretched second diffuser, and (d) the released second diffuser. Each of them was represented with (i) the captured optical image, (ii) FFT simulation generated from captured optical images in i, (iii) the roughness profiles, (iv) the average mean depth of lenslet arrays at different powers.

The depth for the diffusers was measured with tolerance dimensions. These tolerance dimensions were computationally estimated based on the average mean depth calculation. As the laser power increases for the first fabricated diffuser (4.5 μm tip width), the depth started from 10 μm at a power of 4.5 W and kept rising to 20 μm at a power of 6 W (Figure a,iv). However, the depth in the second fabricated diffuser (2 μm) has the dimension of 7 μm at a power of 4.5 W and 25 μm at a power of 6 W (Figure c,iv). These greater variations could be due to the changing curing agent to resin (base) ratio which alters the properties of the resulting cured elastomer. As the ratio of the curing agent to resin increases, a more rigid elastomer is produced.[27] Another effect could be that the elastomer plane, particularly at the fabricated face, has an inaccurate flat surface.

Once both diffuser elements were released to 0% strain, their surfaces characteristics shrank, and their profiles simultaneously extended in reverse. Upon observation under the microscope, the first released diffuser brought down the width of tip from 4.5 to 2.5 μm, while the second released diffuser decreased from 2 μm to < ∼1 μm (Figure b,i and d,i). In reverse, the depth of cylindrical lenslets was extended for both diffusers. The observed depth on first diffuser was elongated from 10 to 12 at a power of 4.5 W. Even at other powers, the net results indicated that the depths elongated instantly by ∼10% (Figure b,iv). On the other hand, the behavior of the depth elongation in the second released diffuser was extended up to ∼19% (Figure d,iv). These different observations in the reduction and extension could be an indication of the dominant presence of such elastomer instability, either from the curing process or deformation. For this reason, the topography characteristic of both diffusers was quite instable at these applied strains; however, they maintained their shapes and transparency.

Wettability Characteristics

It is well-known that liquid wetting on solids depends on both surface chemistry and physical factors, whereas this work focused on physical factors.[28−30] For the two diffuser elements, the surfaces were decorated with identical cylindrical lenslet arrays but separated with different tip widths. Both tip width and lenslet depth play an important role in liquid wetting behavior. In order to evaluate the relationship between stretched and released diffuser states, the working principle of wettability resistance in the stretched and released conditions is illustrated in Figure a, which follows Cassie’s theory where air can remain trapped below the droplet.[31] Theoretically, when the diffuser is being stretched, leading to enlarging the tips width and cylindrical lenslets diameter, more air remains trapped below the droplet, but the number of a contacted point with tips reduces. In this case, the stretched and released behavior could affect correspondingly the wettability resistance, and for that reason, the contact angle of the water droplet was measured for the two diffusers, particularly at stretched and released states. These measurements also took into account various applied strains (0, 33, and 66%) and three distinct orientations: by rotating the axes of the substrate from upward to sideways and to downward orientations (Figure b,c and Figure S3, Supporting Information).

Figure 3

Wettability characteristics of diffuser elements. (a) Schematic of the photonic diffuser substrate when (i) it is strained from 0% to 66%. (ii) Schematic illustration to mimic how tips and lenslet depth react with droplet for both first diffuser (1st D) and second diffuser (2nd D) based on our experimental results. (b, c) The measurement of the contact angle on stretched and released (b) first diffuser and (c) second diffuser at different orientations: (i) upward, (ii) sideways, and (iii) downward. (d, e) Comparison of contact angle for the first diffuser at the applied strain of 0, 33, and 66% for the first diffuser (d) and second diffuser (e). (f) The relationship between average roughness (Ra) and contact angle for both diffusers once the structural periodicity is similar.

On the first released diffuser element with various lenslet depths, the contact angle of the droplet achieved a value of 156 ± 1° when the parabolic profile of lenslet (or lenslet depth) was 22 μm (Figure b,i). This result suggests that the super-hydrophobic state existed with the PDMS elastomer when microchannels were kept very close to each other.[22] Reducing the depth of lenslet from 22 to 12 μm slightly dropped down the contact angle by ∼8°, which is a sign of less air being trapped in the lens depth. It seemed, in this case, that the pressure of the water droplet will pass through the lens cavity as the pressure of air is insufficient to withstand it, resulting in the tip penetrating the droplet and reducing the contact angle. Furthermore, the diffuser was oriented from a flat (upward) position to a 90° sideways position and a flipped downward position resulting in lower contact angles, around ∼7° at a downward orientation and lower angle around ∼11° at the sideways orientation (Figure b,ii, iii). On the other hand, once this diffuser was stretched with an applied strain of 66%, it has been observed that it reduced both the contact angle and the depth of lenslet. By comparing the surface of diffuser under stretched and released states, the diffuser became capable of transiting between hydrophobic and super-hydrophobic states, which such this behavior cannot be generated by a rigid surface alone.

By reducing the tip width to ≤1 μm in the released second diffuser, the behavior of wettability resistance was completely changed. It seems the droplet of water could not stand on the tips, and therefore the contact angle decreased to 109 ± 1°, which can be interpreted as the progressive sinking of the droplet inside the cavity of the lenslet (Figure c). Increasing the depth of lenslet by ∼20 μm tended to obtain an extra contact angles of around 4°, in close agreement with the Wenzel’s theory, particularly at the depth of surface.[32] However, the hydrophobicity tended to have a much larger contact angle of around 136 ± 1° when this diffuser was stretched to an applied strain of 66%, leading to an enlarged tip width of 2 μm. A comparison between the first and second diffuser associated with tip widths confirms that the hydrophobicity could be improved only if the width of the tips is larger than 2 μm. This is applied in case the lenslet diameter does not change. Finally, more details on how ablation power, applied strain of 33%, and their effect on hydrophobicity are described (see Figure S3, Supporting Information).

Optical Characteristics

Two distinct photonic diffusers were designed based on similar identical cylindrical lenslet arrays but were separated with two different tip widths; thus, avoiding hot spots which are normally produced with a flat surface. These lenses are described as planoconcave lenses which are typically used to diverge collimated beams of light perpendicular to the lens axis (Figure a). Each cylindrical lenslet is defined by a certain number of parameters, such as a parabolic profile (depth) and the diameter. Once these diffusers were stretched uniformly and uniaxially along the cylindrical lens axis, so that the diameter extends and the depth shrinks, optical features were examined and compared against the relaxed diffuser. The stretching and releasing of diffusers was carried out mechanically, this affects the light distribution. To understand this behavior, the working principle of the photonic diffuser is illustrated in Figure a. The schematic illustration presents how light propagates theoretically through the diffuser in both stretched and released states. It shows that the stretched diffuser elongates the diameter of lens allowing more distribution of light. To visualize this, the diffusion pattern of the diffuser was evaluated experimentally by an optical setup (Figure S4). In this optical setup, a collimated laser diode with 633 nm wavelength was illuminated through the diffuser at a normal incident, and the diffracted pattern was projected on to a screen. This projected pattern was captured by a digital camera, and it was processed by employing image intensity processing to obtain its angle of diffusion and its intensity.

Figure 4

Optical characterization of the diffusers. (a) A schematic illustration of the diffraction of light passing through a released and stretched diffuser. (b–i) The angular diffusion measurement of the diffusers when illuminated with a collimated laser pointer (λ = 633 nm). (b) The first and second diffuser have several parabolic depths at stretched states (b, d), and (c, e) at released state, respectively. The diffusion angle represented with a blue color and its fwhm represented with a red color.

On the first type of diffuser, a strain of 66% was applied to stretch the series of diffusers which have different parabolic profile depths for their cylindrical lenslet. For an average lens depth of 19 μm, the stretched diffuser reached the diffusion angle of 67° (Figure b). By reducing the depth to 10 μm, it can be noticed that the diffusion angle went down to 49°. Therefore, adjusting the lens depth gives the ability to produce different diffusion fields of view ranging from 49° to 67°. The diffusion angle at full width at half-maximum (fwhm) was measured, and it was discovered that the diffuser maintained a good fwhm angle. For example, the diffusion angle was 67°, while its fwhm was maintained to be 50°. This diffusion is highly acceptable and often beneficial for many applications. However, when this exact diffuser was released mechanically (strain 0%), it tuned the diffusion angle from 67° to 31° (Figure c). This confirmed that the diffuser has the capability to be a highly mechanically tunable diffuser. The distribution of light against the lens depth was unstable compared to the stretched diffuser. This is because the geometry of lenslet could become unstable in its shape and size. The reason geometry was unstable is that the lenslet fabrication was carried out at the stretched substrate, and when it was released, it did not release uniformly.

On the second diffuser, the tip width was reduced to 2 μm at the stretched state compared to the first diffuser which has a tip width of 4.5 μm. Contrary to the first diffuser, the diffusion angle of 48° was reached for the second stretched diffuser at depth of 24 μm (Figure d), while its fwhm was measured around 26°. This confirmed that the width of the tips could also play an important rule in the distribution of illumination. By increasing the depth of lenslet again for the second diffuser, more depth similarly keeps reducing the diffusion angle as observed in the first diffuser. However, the fwhm of diffusion angle was not  particularly affected by the depth in this case. It was noticed that fwhm was calculated to be 26° and 24° for a depth of 24 and 8 μm, respectively. Once this diffuser was released, the diffraction behavior related to depth was to diminish the distributing light in reverse because increasing the depth had less diffusion angle (Figure e).

Optical transmission measurements were also conducted on both diffuser elements at released states. The transmission of the visible spectrum was measured employing a spectrometer which is connected to an optical microscope by fiber optic. This measurement was taken in the transmission mode with a 50× magnification objective to test the diffusers. The tested results showed that the first released diffuser offered superior optical transmission at minimum depth (Figure a). Generally, the transmission efficiencies of the first stretched diffuser are rated between 73 and 84% (depending on the lenslet depth). The reason the lenslet depth reduces the transmittance is that the depth produced more scattering as shown in the previous results (Figure b–e). However, this very high-efficiency rating is because the engineered lenslet is more efficient; even in this case transmission is not high enough as the laser produces a high roughness surface. But this rough surface in exact periodic structure could play a great role in increasing the diffusion angle (Figure S5a, Supporting Information). Further details on how the laser power affects the percentage of transmission intensity is explained in Figure SSupporting Information.

Figure 5

Optical transmission of diffuser elements across a visible wavelength spectrum for (a) first released diffuser and (b) the released second diffuser having several lenslet depths.

Discussion

The new generation of stretchable diffuser elements developed based on elastomer material enables a mechanically tunable diffuser. A key difference between our production method and traditional machining processes, such as single-point diamond turning, is that there is no mechanical contact with a substrate. These contact based methods lead to an intrinsic distortion of the design pattern on an elastomer substrate, while laser ablation does not. But laser ablation still leads to generating some roughness onto the cylindrical lens, particularly around the edge of the lens, thus enhancing the illumination of diffusion. Other production technologies have also been used such as silver nanowires[33] or nanoporous polymer[34] to diffuse the light, but these technologies need a multistep process for fabrication. Moreover, stretching the elastomer substrate proved to be a feasible method to see a considerable reduction in the lenslet diameter and tip width and potentially produce the tip width in a smaller scale.

For wettability, these fabricated diffusers have the capability to switch mechanically between either hydrophobic to super-hydrophobic or hydrophilic to hydrophobic based on their design structure. On the first diffuser, the tip width structure was 2.5 μm, and it was super-hydrophobic (155°), but became hydrophobic when it was uniaxially extended (66%). This is due to the reduction in tip width and expansion of lens diameter. The reason for the different wettability behavior was that the formed microgrooves have a width of 10 μm meaning the droplet could stand on more tips, while in our case the microgrooves have a width of 70 μm. On the second diffuser, the tip width was around 2 μm, and it became hydrophilic but if it was uniaxially stretched (66%), it switched from hydrophilic to a hydrophobic state. Closer inspection of the increasing lens depth shows a sign of more air trapping, resulting in a rise in the contact angle following the Cassie’s theory.[31]

A stretchable diffuser, a step ahead of a rigid one, enables the production of tunable light distribution patterns. The advanced diffusion capability of a new class of diffusers makes them suitable for most applications that require mechanically stretchable diffusers including flexible OLEDs and wearable strain sensors. Unlike the rigid diffusers,[17,35,36] these stretchable diffusers tune the distribution of light based on mechanically applied strain, while the recently developed diffuser as a sensor controls the light diffraction only based on a swelling behavior of hydrogel from chemicals.[16] However, it has limited control over the light distribution pattern, generally making only linear patterns, but it is still suitable for both uniaxial and biaxial applied strains. Finally, these flexible and stretchable diffusers are highly remarkable because such behavior cannot be generated by a rigid surface alone such as the transition between hydrophobic and super-hydrophobic for wettability or tuning angle for light diffusion.

Materials and Methods

Elastomer Fabrication

The PDMS elastomer was prepared from solidifying a Dow silicone 10:1 encapsulant (Sylgard 184, Dow and Corning, USA). The 10:1 mix ratio of resin as base and curing agent was processed in a disposable glass container. When liquid components were thoroughly mixed, they were poured directly into Petri dishes, 5 cm in diameter (Thermo Scientific). Pouring mixtures were deaired using a vacuum pump (Island Scientific Ltd., UK) for 2 h to minimize air entrapment. After that, the mixture cured at a room temperature for a long period of time (48 h) achieving a substrate of the cross-linked PDMS. The thickness of the PDMS substrate was about 1 mm. The substrate was initially positioned on a custom-designed strain stage and subsequently stretched uniaxially to a strain of 66% allowing smaller surface features to be achieved after the substrate is released.

Stretchable Device Fabrication

Device fabrication was performed at Nanotechnology Laboratory at UOB using a rapid and direct desktop laser ablation system (Rayjet, Trotec Laser Inc., UK) with a powerful CO2 laser in an air atmosphere. The diffuser to be ablated was designed on a square-sized shape (5 × 5 mm) using the CorelDraw design suite. It has a combination of identical tips and cylindrical lenslet arrays which were achieved by altering the dpi parameter. The ablation was directly carried out on a stretched elastomer substrate, with a 66% applied strain where the substrate was placed on a honeycomb table. This kind of structure table provides a reduced contact surface for the material; in order to reduce beam reflection from a work surface the substrate is highly transparent. The dpi parameter was preset to 333 and 500, and for each dpi parameter, the substrate was fabricated with various laser powers (4.5, 4.8, 5.1, 5.4, 5.7, and 6 W) at an ablation speed of 750 mm·s–1. The customized laser power was identified between 4.5 and 6 W as no ablation was produced under 4.5 W, and substrate damaged occurred over 6.5 W. During fabrication, air extractor continuously blew clean air onto the substrate being ablated to avoid dust being burnt into the fabricated substrate by the laser beam.

Surface Characteristics

The topography of fabricated diffuser was studied in the Laser Micro Processing (LMP) group at UOB. It is equipped with a state-of-the-art Alicona G5 InfiniteFocous (IF) system for conducting high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) surface measurements. The optical diffuser was placed onto a working stage of IF system using 10× magnification, and the lateral solution was manipulated to reduce the measurement error. To run the measurement, the lowest and highest focal plane was selected between −100 and 100 μm, and the measurement was processed to extract the topographical features. The extracted result was provided 3D topography of the diffuser surface and enabled the measurement to be carried out determine the surface depth and roughness (Ra). Both measurements were carried out across the combined tips and cylindrical lenses with the selection of profile length and width of 1.57 mm and 0.2 mm, respectively.

Wettability measurement was carried out in Nanotechnology Group at UOB using a simple contact-angle system consisting of a microscope camera (USB Microscope, Plugable, Washington USA) with a 60× 250× magnification, a working stage with the custom-designed strain stage, a LED light source, and a micropipette (SP0020-Auto, SciQuip, Shropshire). The contact angle (α) was measured for all modified surfaces by applying 2.00 ± 0.06 μL drops at 24 °C at a relative humidity level of 23–25%. The aqueous drop was captured, and the captured image was processed using ImageJ software (Wayne Rasband, National Institute of Health, USA) which uses Laplace equations to determine the contact angle based on the shape of the drop captured. The average CA values were obtained by measuring the device three times at various strains of 0, 33 and 66%; three sets of readings, where the droplet acted on a flat, inverted, and vertical orientation, were obtained.

Optical transmission measurements of optical diffusers across the visible spectrum range of 450–700 nm were performed using the spectral transmittance measurement setup. It consisted of a broadband light and a spectrophotometer with 2 nm resolution (USB2000+, Ocean Optics, Oxford, UK) integrated with an optical microscope (Axio Scope.A1) via an optic fiber. The sample was vertically orientated between the spectrometer and the broadband light source at the normal incident.

For diffraction analysis, an angular spectral measurement setup was used to capture the diffracted light. The setup consisted of a rotational stage with the custom-designed strain stage, a collimated laser diode with a lasing wavelength of 633 nm (Thorlab) and a screen, instead of optical power meter. The optical diffuser was mounted onto the custom-designed strain stage, between the laser source and screen, allowing the application of strain by stretching from one side (see Figure S4b, Supporting Information). The distance between the released sample-screen and stretched sample-screen was 30.5 and 47 cm, respectively. The laser light was pointed through a sample normally incident, while a digital camera placed on the another side was used for capturing the diffracted pattern on the screen. After the diffracted patterns were captured, an image intensity processing was utilized to produce the angle of diffraction and its intensity by processing the captured image. The angular field of view of diffraction was calculated based on the measurements from the diffracted pattern on the screen.

Safety Statement

No unexpected or unusually high safety hazards were encountered.

Conclusion

The experiments establish the key principle that novel flexible and stretchable diffusers can be produced using elastomer material. These diffusers confirmed that the tips width, lens depths, and diameters played a main role in the distribution of light and surface wettability. Also, stretching the diffuser substrates mechanically offered both tunable light diffusions and switchable wettability. They provide, for wettability, a wide range of surfaces with hydrophilic to super-hydrophobic properties and tuned the diffusion angle from 26° to 48°. For further work, more applied strain on diffusers could be investigated, and we suggest that the high efficiency of these stretchable diffusers enables them to have great potential to be utilized in a variety of optoelectronic and optomechanical applications.