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

The macropore silica colloidal crystal templates were assembledorderly in a capillary glass tube by an applied electric fieldmethod to control silica deposition. In order to achieve thephotonic band gap (PBG) of colloidal crystal in opticalcommunication waveband, the diameter of silica microspheres isselected by Bragg diffraction formula. An experiment was designed totest the bandgap of the silica crystal templates. This paperdiscusses the formation process and the close-packed fashion of thesilica colloidal crystal templates was discussed. The surfacemorphology of the templates was also analyzed. The results showedthat the close-packed fashion of silica array templates wasface-centered cubic (FCC) structure. The agreement is very good between theexperimental data and the theoretical calculation.