Bottom-up self-assembly is regarded as an alternative way to manufacture series of microstructures in many fields, especially chiral microstructures, which attract tremendous attention because of their optical micromanipulations and chiroptical spectroscopies. However, most of the self-assembled microstructures cannot be tuned after processing, which largely hinders their broad applications. Here, we demonstrate a promising manufacturing strategy for switchable microstructures by combining the flexibility of femtosecond laser printing induced capillary force self-assembly and the temperature-responsive characteristics of smart hydrogels. Through designing asymmetric cross-link density, the printed microarchitectures can be deformed in the opposite direction and assembled into switchable ordered microstructures driven by capillary forces under different temperatures. Finally, the assembled chiral microstructures with switchable opposite handedness are realized, which shows tunable vortical dichroism. The proposed strategy holds potential applications in the fields of chiral photonics, chiral sensing, and so on.
Keywords: capillary forces; chiral microstructures; femtosecond laser; self-assembly; two photon polymerization.