A Simple Wet-Chemical Approach to Making Materials which can Manipulate Light

What is it about?

Colloidal photonic crystals are materials that are able to control the direction that light can travel in. A good natural example here is the opal gemstone which exhibits pleasing opalescence where the colours observed change and shimmer as the gem is rotated around. In this work we make analogues of these materials in the lab, using a very simple and rapid chemical approach and we also show that it is possible to 'tune' the properties of the materials by adding tiny particles of silicon to the material. The resulting materials are very pleasing to look at in terms of the colours that they exhibit, but more importantly their ability influence the way light behaves is greatly enhanced

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Why is it important?

Materials of this nature can be used for all optical integrated circuits, optical connections between electronic chips, signs that don't use any electrical power, solar cells that are more efficient, light-emitting diodes that are more efficient, sensors that can detect various unpleasant chemicals and even strain gauges that could indicate that a building has been stressed by seismic activity.

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