Fabrication of Colloidal Photonic Crystals with Heterostructure by Spin-Coating Method

Colloidal photonic crystal heterostructures, composed of two opaline photonic crystal films of silica spheres with different diameters, are fabricated by a two-step spin-coating method. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and UV-vis spectrophotometer are used to characterize the heterostructures. The SEM images show good ordering of the two-layer colloidal crystals constituting the heterostructures. The transmission spectra measured from the (111) plane in the heterostructure show that the composite colloidal photonic crystals have double photonic stop bands. Furthermore, when the sizes of the silica spheres used for fabricating the composite photonic crystal are slightly different, the transmission spectrum shows that the composite photonic crystals have more extended bandgap than that of the individual photonic crystals due to partial overlapping of its two photonic stop bands.