Description |
Self-assembled colloidal 3D photonic crystals (PCs) are pervasive in many areas of science and technology especially in photonics. The task of investigating the applications of PCs in the fields of optical limiting and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) requires photonic crystal structures with good crystalline quality. For this, we have fabricated colloidal photonic crystal structures with homemade monodisperse polystyrene microspheres and studied their optical and structural characteristics with the incorporation of alcohols. An in-situ study of silver nanoparticle formation in a polymer matrix was carried out through the observation of time dependent Raman signal of polymer matrix. In this process different continuous wave lasers with low power were employed for the formation of silver nanoparticles and as well to collect the enhanced Raman scattering of host matrix simultaneously. This technique may probably open up a new window to diffuse metal nanoparticles in the interstitials of colloidal photonic crystal structures in order to exploit the photonic band gap effect on the enhancement of Raman scattering signals.
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