Advanced Materials, Vol.20, No.1, 123-123, 2008
Fabrication and light-transmission properties of monolayer square symmetric colloidal crystals via controlled convective self-assembly on 1D grooves
Self-organization of colloidal spheres within a channel, of which a ID periodic groove substrate is used as the bottom substrate, is studied. We demonstrate that high-quality monolayer square symmetric colloidal crystals can be achieved only when the colloidal suspension drying front is set parallel to close-packing rows of a commensurate square lattice of the 1D periodic grooves. Experimental optical characterization and theoretical simulations of the samples are presented and discussed.