High-speed fabrication of patterned colloidal photonic structures in centrifugal microfluidic chips

Abstract

In this paper, we report a fast and facile method for fabricating colloidal photonic crystals inside microchannels of radially symmetric microfluidic chips. As the suspension of monodisperse silica or polystyrene latex spheres was driven to flow through the channels under the centrifugal force, the colloidal spheres were quickly assembled into face centered cubic arrangement which had photonic stop bands. The optical reflectance spectrum was modulated by the refractive-index mismatch between the colloidal particles and the solvent filled in the interstices between the particles. Therefore, the present microfluidic chips with built-in colloidal photonic crystals can be used as in-situ optofluidic microsensors for high throughput screening, light filters and biosensors in integrated adaptive optical devices.