High-quality colloidal photonic crystals obtained by optimizing growth parameters in a vertical deposition technique

Abstract High-quality polystyrene colloidal crystals were fabricated from aqueous solutions with a vertical deposition technique. The role of sphere size, volume fraction, relative humidity (RH), evaporation temperature and the final drying conditions on the film quality were investigated. We found that all those parameters must be taken into account in order to achieve highest quality for a given particle size. With particles of 300 nm in diameter, the optimal conditions were found to be a 0.1–0.2% volume fraction, an RH between 80% and 90%, an evaporation temperature near 60°C and a quasi-equilibrium drying process.

[1]  Leung,et al.  Photonic band structure: The face-centered-cubic case employing nonspherical atoms. , 1991, Physical review letters.

[2]  Bernhard J. Hoenders,et al.  Photonic bandgap optimization in inverted fcc photonic crystals , 2000 .

[3]  R. G. Denning,et al.  Fabrication of photonic crystals for the visible spectrum by holographic lithography , 2000, Nature.

[4]  E. Yablonovitch,et al.  Inhibited spontaneous emission in solid-state physics and electronics. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[5]  O. Z. Karimov,et al.  EXISTENCE OF A PHOTONIC PSEUDOGAP FOR VISIBLE LIGHT IN SYNTHETIC OPALS , 1997 .

[6]  W. Russel,et al.  Disorder-to-Order Transition in Settling Suspensions of Colloidal Silica: X-ray Measurements , 1989, Science.

[7]  Vlasov,et al.  Manifestation of intrinsic defects in optical properties of self-organized opal photonic crystals , 2000, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[8]  I. B. Ivanov,et al.  Two-dimensional crystallization , 1993, Nature.

[9]  Kurt Busch,et al.  Macroporous silicon with a complete two‐dimensional photonic band gap centered at 5 μm , 1996 .

[10]  Azriel Z. Genack,et al.  Microwave transmission through a periodic three-dimensional metal-wire network containing random scatterers , 1997 .

[11]  Ekmel Ozbay,et al.  Micromachined millimeter‐wave photonic band‐gap crystals , 1994 .

[12]  Yurii A. Vlasov,et al.  Chemical Approaches to Three‐Dimensional Semiconductor Photonic Crystals , 2001 .

[13]  J. Joannopoulos,et al.  Photonic crystals: putting a new twist on light , 1997, Nature.

[14]  Bradley K. Smith,et al.  A three-dimensional photonic crystal operating at infrared wavelengths , 1998, Nature.

[15]  John,et al.  Strong localization of photons in certain disordered dielectric superlattices. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[16]  Kurt Busch,et al.  PHOTONIC BAND GAP FORMATION IN CERTAIN SELF-ORGANIZING SYSTEMS , 1998 .

[17]  Jane F. Bertone,et al.  Single-Crystal Colloidal Multilayers of Controlled Thickness , 1999 .

[18]  F. Leblanc,et al.  Self-assembling three-dimensional colloidal photonic crystal structure with high crystalline quality , 2001 .

[19]  Kuniaki Nagayama,et al.  Continuous Convective Assembling of Fine Particles into Two-Dimensional Arrays on Solid Surfaces , 1996 .