Self-assembled photonic devices

My group has recently demonstrated a number of strategies for self-assembling spherical colloids into complex structures for various types of applications. In one example, spherical colloids have been organized into uniform, polygonal or polyhedral clusters (such as dimers, trimers, squares, pentagons, hexagons, and tetrahedrons) with well-controlled shapes and structures. These well-defined clusters provide a good model system to study the light scattering or hydrodynamics of non-spherical colloids. In another example, spherical colloids have been assembled into three-dimensionally ordered lattices that exhibit interesting photonic bandgap properties. We can control the orientations of these photonic crystals by templating against relief structures etched in the surfaces of silicon wafers. In this presentation, I am going to briefly discuss the procedure, capability, advantages, disadvantages, and future directions for each approach.