Opals for Photonic Band-Gap Applications

Silicon and zinc oxide are two materials of great importance in photonics whose infiltration in opal templates has demonstrated the potential of both the materials and the templating technique. We describe the infiltration in organic opals made of polystyrene and the optical properties derived from the materials under the morphology imposed by the template. In particular, we describe the new morphologies obtained by the direct conformal growth of ZnO on the opals and the complex structures obtained by double templating using conformal silica or ZnO as sacrificial layers. Composites of the two featured materials are also demonstrated and their optical properties assessed in terms of potential photonic band-gap applications