Fabrication of mesoscale polymeric templates for three-dimensional disordered photonic materials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the fabrication and characterization of mesoscale polymeric templates for three-dimensional disordered photonic materials, showing their potential for creating isotropic photonic structures with controlled disorder.

Contribution

It introduces a method for fabricating mesoscale disordered photonic templates using direct laser writing and characterizes their structure and optical properties.

Findings

Good agreement between experimental scattering data and numerical models.

Feasibility of fabricating random disordered photonic materials at relevant scales.

Potential for creating isotropic photonic materials with controlled disorder.

Abstract

We report on the mesoscale fabrication and characterization of polymeric templates for isotropic photonic materials derived from hyper- uniform point patterns using direct laser writing in a polymer photoresist. We study experimentally the microscopic structure by electron microscopy and small angle light scattering. Reducing the refractive index mismatch by liquid infiltration we find good agreement between the scattering data and numerical calculations based on a discrete dipole approximation. Our work demonstrates the feasibility of fabricating such random designer materials on technologically relevant length scales.