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

A self-assembly method, named angle controlled inclined deposition method, is developed for fabricating well-ordered silica and polystyrene colloidal crystal. A high quality colloidal crystal with 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) is 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 those of the compositional colloidal crystals along the stacking direction.