Photonic crystals (PCs) in nature have been endowed many functions

such as fantasy structure colors

special wettabilities and high film strength.On the basis of our recent work inspired by these special functions of PCs in nature

this feature article introduced that polymer PCs with special wettabilities were fabricated by constructing core-shell polymer latex

adjusting the surface morphology of latex and other methods.PCs with high strength were prepared by photo-crosslinked among the polymer latex arrays.Anisotropic PCs were fabricated from mushroomcaped latex particle.Such functional PCs were further demonstrated applications in humidity sensing

oil sensing

self-oscillating system sensing

etc.Finally

largescale fabrication of functional PCs has been demonstrated by spray coating and ink-jet printing.Those studies will be of great importance for developing novel polymer PCs materials.