Opal-like photonic crystal with diamond lattice

In this contribution, a method to fabricate a diamond structure with a complete PBG in the near infrared is proposed. The procedure starts by building an opal composed of two types of microspheres (organic and inorganic) in a body-centered-cubic symmetry by means of a micro-robotic technique. Then, the organic particles may be selectively removed to obtain a diamond structure of inorganic particles. Once this structure is assembled its filling fraction may be controlled by sintering. Subsequently this template can be infiltrated with an adequate high refractive index material. In this way, the method can be extended to make diamond inverse opals of, for instance, silicon with gap to mid gap ratios as large as 13% for moderate filling fractions. An overview of micromanipulation as well as previous experimental results will be offered to show the feasibility of this method.© (2002) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.