Elaboration of photonic crystal heterostructures by the Langmuir–Blodgett method

This paper describes the elaboration of photonic crystal heterostructures with a perfectly defined architecture. The transfer of a Langmuir film of functionalized silica particles onto a solid substrate gave us the ability to build three-dimensional (3D) colloidal crystals. The influence of the withdrawing speed of the substrate on the crystalline quality of the 3D photonic materials has been studied. Photonic crystal heterostructures have been fabricated by the successive depositions of layers of silica spheres with different diameters. The composite materials have been characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. Our results establish that the optical properties of these multilayer systems can be tailored by adjusting either the thickness or the stacking order of each component crystal