The fabrication of capillary cylindrical crystals from colloidal suspension with controllable thickness by evaporation-induced self-assembly method has been investigated. The thickness of the hollow cylinders can be precisely controlled ranging from monolayer to tens of layers by varying the suspension concentration. With the increase of suspension concentration, the particles fill completely inside capillaries to form solid bulk crystals and the critical values are found in capillaries with various diameters. Scanning electron microscope images confirm the facecentered-cubic structure in both crystals, but with two different [111] crystalline directions. The experiment parameters, such as the solvent, concentration of the suspension and inner diameter of capillary are studied for the quality and the number of film layers control. Qualitative analysis has been performed to probe into the solvent evaporation modes and the mechanism of particle arrangement inside the capillary.

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A sol-gel cooperative assembly method was demonstrated for the fabrication of inverse opal films with an open surface. In this method, a sol-gel silicate precursor was cooperatively assembled into the interstitial spaces of microspheres at the same time when polystyrene templates formed in between two desired substrates. Silica inverse opals with a three-dimensional ordered macroporous (3DOM) structure were obtained after selective removing the colloidal templates by calcination. The open surfaces with a high degree of interconnected porosity and extremely uniform pore size were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM). Optical transmission spectra reveals the existence of considerable deep band gaps of up to 70% and steep band edges of up to 6%/nm in the [111] directions of the 3DOM silica samples. A little shrinkage confirmed by transmission spectra is not larger than 3%, in consistent with the results measured by SEM, which revealing the sufficient and compact infiltration into the interstitial spaces by our confined sol-gel coassembly method. With different incidence angles, the positions of pseudogaps can be easily tuned in the wide range from 720 nm to 887 nm, agreed well with the calculated values by the Bragg law. All the results prove that the sol-gel coassembly method with two substrates confinement is a simple, low cost, convenient and versatile method for the fabrication of silica inverse opals without overlayers in large domains.

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In order to discuss the application and mode of the forced modulation function in a sensor, the optical fibre emphasis function was established by referring to the geometric method, the tilt factor and the shape factor of the reflecting surface. These were introduced for the first time, and the corresponding mathematical model was established. The method of numerical simulation is systematically studied and multimode optical fibre parameters (including optical fibre of axial spacing, optical fibre core diameter and numerical aperture) are adopted. The reflective surface inclination and shape factors on the RIM–FOS intensity modulation characteristics are studied according to the obtained light quasi-Gaussian distribution model, establishing a general three-intensity modulation function of fibre optic sensor. The results show that the intensity modulation characteristic of specular reflection is obviously better than that of the diffuse reflection surface, and the peak value of the modulation function is five times that of diffuse reflection. The intensity modulation characteristic decreases with increase in the roughness of the reflection surface. The system can not only complete the RIM–FOS characteristic simulation and characteristic testing functions, but can also start-up the test and not be affected by the ambient light interference and power fluctuation of the light source. The test stability is good with high repeatability.