Simulation and Fabrication of Polystyrene Based Photonic Crystals Operating in Visible Light

We have simulated the light behavior in hexagonal close-packed arrays of 260nm polystyrene (PS) particles and found that these structures can reflect a part of visible light as a photonic crystal. PS particles with high monodispersity and enough surface charge as the crystal building blocks were fabricated using a semi-batch emulsion polymerization. Particles self-assembly during sedimentation and spin-coating were employed as two different methods in order to achieve photonic crystals. The simulation predicted that these photonic crystals have stop-band in the purple region and photos taken from the samples confirmed it.

Keywords:

Photonic crystal , Stop-band , Monodisperse , Hexagonal close-packed , Self-assembly