Applied electric field to fabricate colloidal crystals with the photonic band-gap in communication waveband

The macropore silica colloidal crystal templates were assembled orderly in a capillary glass tube by an applied electric field method to control silica deposition. In order to achieve the photonic band gap (PBG) of colloidal crystal in optical communication waveband, the diameter of silica microspheres is selected by Bragg diffraction formula. An experiment was designed to test the bandgap of the silica crystal templates. This paper discusses the formation process and the close-packed fashion of the silica colloidal crystal templates was discussed. The surface morphology of the templates was also analyzed. The results showed that the close-packed fashion of silica array templates was face-centered cubic (FCC) structure. The agreement is very good between the experimental data and the theoretical calculation.