Rapid synthesis of monodisperse polymer spheres for self-assembled photonic crystals

In order to make both the laboratory and the industry preparation of monodisperse spheres easy, a boiling temperature soap-free emulsion polymerization was developed. A number of polymer and copolymer spheres with a size of several hundreds of nanometer were synthesized. Comparing with the conventional synthesis, this method has following advantages: (1) the experimental set-up and operation are simplified, (2) the reaction time is shortened, (3) ease of control of sphere size and size distribution with good repeatability, (4) a number of polymer spheres, including PAN, PS, PMMA and PVA, can be synthesized, and (5) spheres with over 20% cross-linkage can be synthesized. Application of the spheres in the construction of self-assembled photonic crystal films was demonstrated.