Self-Assembly Motif for Creating Submicron Periodic Materials. Polymerized Crystalline Colloidal Arrays

We report the development of a method for creating new submicron periodic materials. These materials will have numerous applications in various areas of technology. This periodic material is composed of a body-centered cubic (BCC), face-centered cubic (FCC), or random hexagonal stacked array of spherical particles in which the periodicity is locked into a hydrogel polyacrylamide network.’ The lattice constant of this array can be varied between