Issue 38, 2013

Scalable bottom-up fabrication of colloidal photonic crystals and periodic plasmonic nanostructures

Abstract

Photonic crystals and plasmonics are two key techniques that could ultimately enable all-optical integrated circuits and quantum information processing. Unfortunately, the development and implementation of these techniques have been greatly impeded by expensive and painstaking top-down nanofabrication (e.g., electron-beam lithography). By contrast, bottom-up colloidal self-assembly and subsequent templating nanofabrication provide a much simpler, faster, and inexpensive alternative to nanolithography in creating highly ordered photonic crystals and plasmonic nanostructures. However, traditional colloidal self-assembly and templating nanofabrication approaches suffer from low throughput, incompatibility with standard microfabrication, and limited crystal structures which greatly hamper the mass-production and on-chip integration of practical nanooptical devices. In this feature article, we review the recent advances of a versatile spin-coating technological platform that enables rapid production of wafer-scale colloidal photonic crystals with unusual non-close-packed structures and a large variety of periodic metal nanostructures with tunable plasmonic properties.

Graphical abstract: Scalable bottom-up fabrication of colloidal photonic crystals and periodic plasmonic nanostructures

Article information

Article type
Feature Article
Submitted
19 4 2013
Accepted
17 6 2013
First published
18 6 2013

J. Mater. Chem. C, 2013,1, 6031-6047

Scalable bottom-up fabrication of colloidal photonic crystals and periodic plasmonic nanostructures

Y. Fang, B. M. Phillips, K. Askar, B. Choi, P. Jiang and B. Jiang, J. Mater. Chem. C, 2013, 1, 6031 DOI: 10.1039/C3TC30740A

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