Rapid electrostatics-assisted layer-by-layer assembly of near-infrared-active colloidal photonic crystals

A rapid and scalable bottom-up technology has been developed for layer-by-layer assembling near-infrared-active colloidal photonic crystals consisting of micrometer-scale silica microspheres. This new electrostatics-assisted approach can enhance the crystal transfer speed of traditional Langmuir-Blo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of colloid and interface science 2016-11, Vol.482, p.89-94
Main Authors: Askar, Khalid, Leo, Sin-Yen, Xu, Can, Liu, Danielle, Jiang, Peng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Colloidal crystals
Electrostatics
Langmuir-Blodgett
Layer-by-layer
Photonic crystals
Self-assembly
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Summary:A rapid and scalable bottom-up technology has been developed for layer-by-layer assembling near-infrared-active colloidal photonic crystals consisting of micrometer-scale silica microspheres. This new electrostatics-assisted approach can enhance the crystal transfer speed of traditional Langmuir-Blodgett-based colloidal assembly technologies by nearly 2 orders of magnitude. [Display omitted] Here we report a rapid and scalable bottom-up technique for layer-by-layer (LBL) assembling near-infrared-active colloidal photonic crystals consisting of large (⩾1μm) silica microspheres. By combining a new electrostatics-assisted colloidal transferring approach with spontaneous colloidal crystallization at an air/water interface, we have demonstrated that the crystal transfer speed of traditional Langmuir-Blodgett-based colloidal assembly technologies can be enhanced by nearly 2 orders of magnitude. Importantly, the crystalline quality of the resultant photonic crystals is not compromised by this rapid colloidal assembly approach. They exhibit thickness-dependent near-infrared stop bands and well-defined Fabry-Perot fringes in the specular transmission and reflection spectra, which match well with the theoretical calculations using a scalar-wave approximation model and Fabry-Perot analysis. This simple yet scalable bottom-up technology can significantly improve the throughput in assembling large-area, multilayer colloidal crystals, which are of great technological importance in a variety of optical and non-optical applications ranging from all-optical integrated circuits to tissue engineering.
ISSN:0021-9797
1095-7103
DOI:10.1016/j.jcis.2016.07.076