Photonic crystals have proven their potential and are nowadays a familiar concept. They have been approached from many scientific and technological flanks. Among the many techniques devised to implement this technology self-assembly has always been one of great popularity surely due to its ease of access and the richness of results offered. Self-assembly is also probably the approach entailing more materials aspects owing to the fact that they lend themselves to be fabricated by a great many, very different methods on a vast variety of materials and to multiple purposes. To these well-known material systems a new sibling has been born (photonic glass) expanding the paradigm of optical materials inspired by solid state physics crystal concept. It is expected that they may become an important player in the near future not only because they complement the properties of photonic crystals but because they entice the researchers' curiosity. In this review a panorama is presented of the state of the art in this field with the view to serve a broad community concerned with materials aspects of photonic structures and more so those interested in self-assembly.

Self-assembly of particles into long-range, three-dimensional, ordered superstructures is crucial for the design of a variety of materials, including plasmonic sensing materials, energy or gas storage systems, catalysts and photonic crystals. Here, we have combined experimental and simulation data to show that truncated rhombic dodecahedral particles of the metal-organic framework (MOF) ZIF-8 can self-assemble into millimetre-sized superstructures with an underlying three-dimensional rhombohedral lattice that behave as photonic crystals. Those superstructures feature a photonic bandgap that can be tuned by controlling the size of the ZIF-8 particles and is also responsive to the adsorption of guest substances in the micropores of the ZIF-8 particles. In addition, superstructures with different lattices can also be assembled by tuning the truncation of ZIF-8 particles, or by using octahedral UiO-66 MOF particles instead. These well-ordered, sub-micrometre-sized superstructures might ultimately facilitate the design of three-dimensional photonic materials for applications in sensing.

Three‐dimensional arrays of SiO2 nanometer particles lead to Bragg diffraction effects of visible light—as seen for natural opals, see also this issue's cover—and applications such as photonic bandgap materials. Teh fabrication of the opalline structures is described and details are given of how to obtain ordered compacts. The Figure shows a fracture surface of a sintered sample comprising 390 nm‐diameter silica spheres. magnified image

It is well-known that stacking of hard spheres results in close-packed structures. However, until recently, it was not clear which of the various possible phases (cubic, hexagonal, mixed, or random) was the stable one. We have performed a microscopy characterization of solid crystals made of monodisperse SiO2 nanometric spheres. It was found that, for a wide range of particle diameters, the cubic phase is the only one present. This largely serves to confirm recent theoretical calculations by L. V. Woodcock which conclude that the cubic phase is the most stable one. This opens new prospects in the application of colloidal crystals to photonic band gap engineering.