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Photonics

Self-assembly lights up

Nature volume 414, pages 257–258 (2001)Cite this article

Opals do it, even biomolecules do it, so why can't self-assembly be harnessed to create photonic crystals with near-perfect order? A new technique shows that absolute order may not require absolute control.

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Figure 1: Growth in photonics. Vlasov et al.4 show how to create a silicon photonic crystal starting from the self-assembly of a colloidal suspension of silica microspheres into an ordered template.

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  1. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    John D. Joannopoulos

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  1. John D. Joannopoulos
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Correspondence to John D. Joannopoulos.

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Joannopoulos, J. Self-assembly lights up. Nature 414, 257–258 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35104718

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