Erdem, Talha;
O'Neill, Thomas;
Zupkauskas, Mykolas;
Caciagli, Alessio;
Xu, Peicheng;
Lan, Yang;
Bosecke, Peter;
(2022)
Transparent Colloidal Crystals With Structural Colours.
Frontiers in Physics
, 10
, Article 847142. 10.3389/fphy.2022.847142.
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Abstract
Spatially ordered arrangements of spherical colloids are known to exhibit structural colours. The intensity and brilliance of these structural colours typically improve with colloidal monodispersity, low concentrations of point and line defects and with increasing refractive index contrast between the colloids and the embedding medium. Here we show that suspensions of charge stabilised, fluorinated latex particles with low refractive-index contrast to their aqueous background form Wigner crystals with FCC symmetry for volume fractions between 13 and 40%. In reflection they exhibit both strong, almost angle-independent structural colours and sharp, more brilliant Bragg peaks despite the particle polydispersity and bimodal distribution. Simultaneously, these suspensions appear transparent in transmission. Furthermore, binary AB, A2B and A13B type mixtures of these fluorinated and similarly sized polystyrene particles appeared predominantly white but with clear Bragg peaks indicating a CsCl-like BCC structure and more complex crystals. We characterised the suspensions using a combination of reflectivity measurements and small-angle x-ray scattering, complemented by reflectivity modelling.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Transparent Colloidal Crystals With Structural Colours |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fphy.2022.847142 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2022.847142 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | t © 2022 Erdem, O’Neill, Zupkauskas, Caciagli, Xu, Lan, Bösecke and Eiser. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Physical Sciences, Physics, Multidisciplinary, Physics, colloid, structural color, SAXS (small-angle X-ray scattering), latex particle, photonic crystals, PHOTONIC CRYSTALS, PHASE-TRANSITION, HARD-SPHERE, BEHAVIOR, PROTEIN, SYSTEM, ANGLE |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Chemical Engineering UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10150312 |
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