A colloidal crystal double-heterostructure fabricated with the angle controlled inclined deposition method

A self-assembly method, named the angle controlled inclined deposition method, is developed for fabricating well-ordered silica and polystyrene colloidal crystals. A high-quality colloidal crystal with a flat and uniform surface over a large area can be produced rapidly using a minute quantity of suspension and without any additional equipment. By controlling the inclined angle, we can fabricate colloidal crystals with diverse numbers of layers. A colloidal crystal double-heterostructure (composed of three different colloidal photonic crystals) can be rapidly fabricated with this method. Both experimental and simulation results show that the photonic band gap of the double-heterostructure is not a simple superposition of that of the compositional colloidal crystals along the stacking direction.