2003/12/16 by A. A. Chabanov, Y. Jun, Yongseok Jun +2 · 135 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Band gap #Chemical engineering #Colloid #Colloidal crystal #Colloidal silica #Composite material #Electron microscope #Fern and Epiphyte Biology #Light scattering #Materials science #Nanotechnology #Optics #Optoelectronics #Photonic Crystals and Applications #Photonic and Optical Devices #Photonic crystal #Photonics #Refractive index #SPHERES #Scanning electron microscope #Scattering #Self-assembly #Sintering #Thermogravimetry #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.1737066
published in Applied Physics Letters 84(18), 3573-3575 (American Institute of Physics) · REvTex: 4 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2003/12/16 · openalex publication_date 2004/04/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Thin colloidal crystals (or synthetic opals) composed of Stöber silica spheres typically develop cracks when they are utilized to obtain photonic band-gap crystals (or inverted opals). We find that, by sintering the silica spheres prior to assembly of the opal, these cracks can be avoided. We report the effects of temperature and duration of the heat treatment on 850 nm silica spheres using electron microscopy, thermogravimetry, and light scattering. We also find a large dependence of the refractive index of the silica on the temperature of the heat treatment. This may allow tuning of the refractive index of silica spheres.