Synthetic Metals 139 (2003) 633–636 Morphology and optical properties of bare and polydiacetylenes-infiltrated opals

Polystyrene artificial opals have been grown by slow gravity sedimentation from aqueous suspension of monodisperse nano-spheres of different diameters. These opals have been infiltrated with diacetylenic monomers, which have been subsequently polymerized. The mor-phology of the surface has been characterized by atomic force and scanning electron microscopies. In addition, a careful micro-optical char-acterization of these samples has been performed. The photonic band structure of the opals was derived from variable-angle micro-reflectance measurements and favorably compared with that theoretically calculated