부산대학교 도서관

The potential of colloidal crystals for applications in optics and photonics has been recognized since the description of spontaneous self-assembly of monodisperse colloids into periodic opaline geometries. Provided with a laser gain medium, these direct assemblies generate optical feedback and have prospective use as lasers, frequency converters and optical transistors; however, problems associated with crystal integrity and low loading capacities for the gain medium have pre-vented their realization to date. Here, we circumvent these problems by synthesizing monodisperse conjugated polymer colloids, which consist entirely of gain medium. We co-assemble these colloids together with a sol-gel precursor to achieve encapsulated photonic crystals, which can be applied via ink-jet printing. These conjugated polymer photonic crystals exhibit single mode laser emission. This technique circumvents time-consuming micro- and nanofabrication steps as well as error prone backfilling and etching procedures, providing an effortless way to generate laser geometries.