Photonic crystals (PC) are functional materials with periodic ordered structure

which can regulate the propagation of light by designing its building units. Polymer photonic crystals have become one of the research hotspots of stimuli-responsive materials because of both the convenience of incorporating functional and responsive moieties

and the easy tunability of lattice periodicity and refractive index. Therefore

they have been intensively studied in the fields of intelligent display

anti-counterfeiting identification

and sensing detection. In this work

the regulation methodology and properties of stimuli-responsive polymer photonic crystals are summarized. Based on the literatures published in recent years

the latest research progress is reviewed.