Optofluidic Assembly of Colloidal Photonic Crystals with Controlled Sizes, Shapes, and Structures

The spontaneous crystallization of colloidal particlesprovides a simple and cheap alternative to nanolithographyfor creating three-dimensional periodic structures. Colloidalcrystals with long-range order diffract light and displayphotonic bandgaps, which is of practical significance forphotonic and phononic crystal devices