Fabrication of Photonic Crystals in Microchannels
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Fabrication of Photonic Crystals in Microchannels Chun-Wen Kuo1,2, Hui-Mei Hsieh1,2, Jung-Chuan Ting1 1 2 Yi-Hong Cho , Kung Hwa Wei and Peilin Chen * 1 1
Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, 128, Section 2, Academia Road, Nankang, Taipei 115, Taiwan 2 Department of Material Science and Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsin Chu 300, Taiwan. *Corresponding author: Fax:+886-2-2782-6680
E-mail: [email protected], Tel:+886-2-2789-8000,
Abstract We have developed a fabrication procedure for growing photonic crystals in the lithographic defined microchannels, which enables easy integration with other planar optical components. This technique is based on the directed evaporation induced self-assembly of nanoparticles in the microchannels. Substrates with pre-patterned microchannels (30-100 µm wide) were dipped into solution of nanoparticles for several days. By controlling the evaporation rate, the meniscus contacting the microchannels will undergo evaporation-induced self-assembly. The capillary forces cause nanospheres to crystallize within the microchannels forming colloidal photonic crystals in the microchannels. Two types of colloidal particles, polystyrene and silica, have been employed to fabricate colloidal photonic crystals in the microchannels. Both types of colloidal particles were found to form large-area well-ordered colloidal single crystals in the microchannels. The optical reflection spectra from the (111) surfaces of the colloidal crystals formed by various sizes of nanoparticles have been measured. And the measured reflection peaks agree with the photonic bandgap calculated by the plane wave expansion method. Introduction The fabrication of three-dimensional periodic dielectric nanostructures, which can work as photonic crystals, has drawn lots of research attention lately, because of their potential capability in controlling the propagation of light [1-3]. There are many approaches to fabricate photonic crystals. However, those utilized self-assembly of monodisperse nanospheres remain to be the simplest and the most inexpensive route to construct three-dimensional periodic nanostructures [4-5]. Standard practice of using self-assembly process to fabricate photonic crystals is to place the substrates into a
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dilute suspension of nanosphere particles in ethanol [6]. As the solvent dries, the particles self-assemble at the receding ethanol meniscus and form close packed nanostructures. In many applications, it has been suggested by the theoretical calculation [5] that the inverse opal structure is a better photonic material. The inverse opals can be constructed by filling the void of the opal with high dielectric constant materials and dissolving away the nanoparticles. In order to integrate photonic crystals into communication devices, it is has been proposed [7-9] to fabricate photonic crystals in the microchannels, which can work as or interconnect with functional optical components such as switches, mirrors, filters and waveguides. We have developed a fab
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