Engineering emulsion to form photonic bandgap materials.

Photonic bandgap (PBG) materials are of significant interest in optical applications as they allow better control of light propagation and emission with little loss. Currently, PBM materials are created using a classical top-down approach, which is expensive and not suitable for large-scale fabrication. Creating large-scale quantities in a bottom-up approach of such materials has been a challenge for the last 30 years. A novel class of non-crystalline and isotropic structures, hyperuniform disordered structures (HUDS) have been discovered to provide photonic bandgaps and offer the advantages of functional-defect design freedom not limited by any crystalline symmetry [1,2], even when the dielectric contrast is relatively low [3]. In the presentation, we will show how emulsions can be experimentally assembled into HUDS using hydrodynamics [4,5] and how these emulsions structures can be engineered to create PBG materials. Our photonics simulations reveal how the minimum required dielectric contrast needed to open a PBG depends on the hydrodynamics process and identifies the optimal conditions for PBG formation.

[1] M. Florescu, et. al, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106(49), 20658 (2009).

[2] W. Man, et. al, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110(40), 15886 (2013).

[3] W. Man et. al, Opt. Express 21(17), 19972 (2013).

[4] R. Jeanneret and D. Bartolo, Nat. Commun. 5, 3474 (2014).

[5] J. H. Weijs, et. al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115(10), 108301 (2015).