Glass-Derived Photonic Crystal Structures

In this paper we report on the fabrication and the characterization of colloidal systems considering complementary structures based on responsive artificial opal both in direct and inverse configuration. We will discuss alternative systems such as: (i) chromatic composite structure as chemical sensor based on polystyrene (PS) nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in elastomeric matrix, where the application of specific organic solvents produces a variation of its color; (ii) metallic dielectric structures, where the infiltration of colloidal crystals with metallic nanoparticles permits to modify the optical properties of the common opal and can be usefully exploited as SERS substrates; (iii) inverse silica opal functionalized with fluorescent aptamers in order to develop biosensors in dye labelled fluorescence detection scheme