Colloidal crystals (opals) made of close-packed polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) were fabricated and grown by Template-Directed methods to obtain porous materials with well-ordered periodicity and interconnected pore systems to manufacture photonic crystals. Opals were made from aqueous suspensions of monodisperse PMMA spheres with diameters between 280 and 415 nm. SEM confirmed the PMMA spheres crystallized uniformly in a face-centered cubic (FCC) array. Optical properties of synthesized pores PMMA were characterized by UV–Visible spectroscopy. It shows that the colloidal crystals possess pseudo photonic band gaps in the visible region. A combination of Bragg’s law of diffraction and Snell’s law of refraction were used to calculate the sphere diameter. Finally, colloidal crystals were subjected to Z-scan experiment under pulsed Q-switched Nd:YAG laser illumination to characterize it for third order nonlinear optical properties. Z-scan results show the change in transmittance of a beam, and the nonlinear refractive index is n2 = 9.82787 x 10-12 (cm2/GW), while the nonlinear absorption coefficient β= 0.04673908 (cm/GW). These results were attributed to enhance the self-focusing arising from Kerr effect and the two-photon absorption.
Improving the optical properties of vinyl-functionalized silica colloidal crystals by thermal annealing
