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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Regular Horizontal Patterning on Colloidal Crystals Produced by Vertical Deposition

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Colloidal particles have proved to be a suitable precursor to the formation of nanoscaled materials. More explicitly, they are a suitable way to create photonic band gap materials in 3D. Several methods have been developed to assemble colloidal multilayer systems, and have yielded various levels of success. The vertical deposition method has shown itself to be one of the best in terms of time, control of the final product, crystal size and homogeneity. Despite this, the resulting crystals often present point defects, dislocations, cracks and polycrystallinity, as well as a horizontal modulation of film thickness. These defects compromise the possible utilities of the crystals. The study of this last kind of defect and the influential factors are the gravity point of this work. For first time in our knowledge, several of these factors where quantitatively studied and new ones were found. A new growth method was developed for a better analysis of the formation process.