posted on 1997-11-12, 00:00authored byWillem L. Vos, Mischa Megens, Carlos M. van Kats, Peter Bösecke
We have resolved a great number of Bragg peaks of photonic
colloidal single crystals by synchrotron
small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). We find that
charge-stabilized colloids form face-centered cubic
crystals at all densities up to ∼60 vol %. The colloidal
particles are highly ordered on their lattice sites,
which confirms that these self-organizing materials are suitable
building blocks for optical photonic matter.
The experiments demonstrate that synchrotron SAXS with
two-dimensional detection is a powerful tool
to study systems with length scales comparable to optical
wavelengths.