Bioinspired structural color striped pattern from scalable assembly

[Display omitted] •A meniscus rapidly receding strategy under lowered pressure was developed to grow structural color stripes.•Lowered pressure triggers the striped assembly with long-range regularity.•Building blocks self-organize into striped structures with adjustable properties on 2D or 3D surfaces in several minutes.•The striped patterns are promising in anti-counterfeiting, mimicking structural color organisms, and manipulating stem cells. Surface patterns are widespread in many organisms, providing the abilities of camouflage, recognition, sexual selection, and survival in creatures. Inspired by these features, structural color stripes over large and complex surfaces were presented based on a meniscus rapidly receding assembly process triggered by lowered pressure and heat. The pattern method allows building blocks to rapidly self-organize into structural color stripes with adjustable morphology and color within several minutes on 2D or complex 3D surfaces. We demonstrate that the structural color striped pattern can be used in anti-counterfeiting, mimicking structural color organisms, and manipulation of stem cell behaviors at multiple levels. This lowered pressure and heat triggered pattern method for engineering scalable structural color stripes provides a powerful tool which cannot be achieved by conventional methods and will promote the wide application of structural color pattern in sensing, artificial robots, anti-counterfeiting, and so on.