Designing photonic band gaps in SiO2-based face-centered cubic-structured crystals

Abstract

We designed face-centered cubic-structured (fcc) photonic crystals whose lattice parameters were tuned by varying the size of the constituent spherical silica particles in the range 100 to 520 nm. From wide-angle optical transmission investigations and Gaussian fitting of the absorbance spectra over UV-Vis-Near IR range, we found that in these crystals the Bragg wavelengths of the photonic band gaps (PBGs) corresponding to the reflected crystal planes linearly increase with the size of the spheres as expected. From this data, the average refractive index along the different crystal planes of the fcc structure was found to be in the 1.24 to 1.32 range. The Bragg wavelengths were tuned between 400 and 1100 nm. Thus, photonic crystals of the same structure can be designed to tune the Bragg wavelengths of PBGs by selecting the sphere size. These studies open up possibilities to design a new class of "smart" photonic crystals consisting of dielectric entities of sub-micron silica spheres with added functionality from magnetic or piezoelectric nanoparticles embedded in them.