A fiber decorated by colloidal photonic crystal

Abstract

A method of fabricating fiber decorated by colloidal photonic crystal is devised. Three-dimensional nanostructure colloidal crystal on the end face of optical fiber was grown by isothermal heating evaporation induced self-assembly method. The optical fiber with colloidal crystals was connected to another lapped optical fiber by glass capillary,and the fiber decorated by colloidal photonic crystal was formed. The nanostructural morphology of the colloidal crystal was examined by SEM. The optical characteristics of the colloidal crystal was also analyzed. The spectral feature of the optical fiber colloidal crystal was measured by using optical sensing analyzer. It has been found that the optimal conditions for a good quality crystal are an evaporation temperature of 40 ℃ with a volume fraction of 0.5% and a deposition time of 12 hours.SEM reveals that the colloidal crystal on the end face of optical fiber has face-centered-cubic structure. Transmission measurement shows the existence of photonic band gap,and the stopgap is located at 1365 nm.