Photochemically functional photonic crystals prepared by using a two-dimensional particle-array template

Photonic crystal is a frontier material to control photons. Among many photonic crystals, the inverse opal structure, which is formed by using a mold of self-assembled particles, became popular because of its easy fabrication and easy chemical modification. In this paper, the TiO2 inverse opal structure was modified to a dye-sensitized photoelectrode. The inverse opal structure was designed to inhibit the emission of the dye. As a result, the incident monochromatic photon-to-electron conversion efficiency per one molar dye of the dye-sensitized inverse opal electrode becomes larger than the one of a normal dye-sensitized electrode.