Recent Advances in Binary Colloidal Crystals for Photonics and Porous Material Fabrication

Abstract

In the past few years, binary colloidal crystals (BCCs) composed of both large and small particles have attracted considerable attention from the scientific community as an exciting alternative to single colloidal crystals (SCCs). In particular, more complex structures with diverse nanotopographies and desirable optical properties of BCCs can be obtained by various colloidal assembly methods, as compared to SCCs. Furthermore, high accuracy in crystal growth with controllable stoichiometries allows for a great deal of promising applications in the fields of both interfacial and material sciences. The visible-light diffraction property of BCCs is more superior than that of SCCs, which makes them have more promising applications in the fabrication of photonic crystals with full band gaps. On the other hand, their spherical shapes and ease of removal property make them ideal templates for ordered porous material fabrication. Hence, this perspective outlined recent advances in assembly approaches of BCCs, with an emphasis on their promising applications for advanced photonics and multifunctional porous material fabrication. Eventually, some challenging yet important issues and some future perspectives are further discussed.

Digital colorimetric sensing for real‐time gas monitoring for smart green energy system

“…SO 2 sensitive CP was selected from several candidates such as metal nanoparticles, 47 chromophores, 5 fluorescent and colloidal crystals, 48 which were commonly used as optical materials in many studies. Carbon‐based materials, such as carbon dots have been recently studied for catalysis, 49 optoelectronics, 50 and anti‐counterfeiting applications 51 based on various advantages such as tunable photoluminescence (PL), high quantum yield, low toxicity, and biocompatibility 52–54 .…”

Recent Advancements in the Fabrication of Functional Nanoporous Materials and Their Biomedical Applications

“…The hard template method provides additional support to nanoporous structures to retain stable pore geometry even after high temperature or solution treatment of the template. Significant progress has been made to develop scalable strategies based on evaporation for constructing 2D and 3D self-assembled colloidal crystals [ 104 , 105 ]. These colloidal crystals can be used to fabricate ordered nanoporous materials with a long-range arrangement of pores within the structure.…”

Shaping in the Third Direction; Fabrication of Hemispherical Micro-Concavity Array by Using Large Size Polystyrene Spheres as Template for Direct Self-Assembly of Small Size Silica Spheres

“…In the present article we show how such a superstructure, namely an ordered hemispherical concavity array, can be obtained by using large-size polystyrene micrometric spheres as scaffolds for the self-assembly of small-size silica sub-micron spheres ( Figure 1 i). To use spheres of two different sizes for their self-assembly is a normality for an already mature scientific domain, namely Binary Colloidal Crystals [ 57 , 58 , 59 ]. However, in this domain, the limits for the spheres’ size ratio r that is defined as the ratio between small size spheres and large size spheres varies between 0.4 and 0.1.…”