X-ray Diffraction of Photonic Colloidal Single Crystals

Abstract

Vos, W.L.; Megens, M.; van Kast, C.M.; Boesecke, P. Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. We have resolved a great number of Bragg peaks of photonic colloidal single crystals by synchrotron small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). We find that charge-stabilized colloids form face-centered cubic crystals at all densities up to ∼60 vol %. The colloidal particles are highly ordered on their lattice sites, which confirms that these self-organizing materials are suitable building blocks for optical photonic matter. The experiments demonstrate that synchrotron SAXS with two-dimensional detection is a powerful tool to study systems with length scales comparable to optical wavelengths.

Structure and optical function of amorphous photonic nanostructures from avian feather barbs: a comparative small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) analysis of 230 bird species

“…The SAXS patterns resolve spatial correlations of dimensions 2p/q that range from a few tens to several hundred nanometres (figures 3 -5). X-rays also interact only weakly with soft biological tissues because of the relatively low electron density of biological media [28][29][30][31]35]. Hence, SAXS provides single scattering data that are highly suited to quantitatively predict the interactions of visible light with the nanostructure without artefacts resulting from multiple scattering.…”

Particle Excursions in Colloidal Crystals

“…Even the dense parts of the samples crystallized and did not form a glass, as evidenced by the large number of fcc peaks. The diffraction patterns were measured at beamline 4 of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble [18][19][20].…”

“…As a result, the peaks in the calculated structure factor coalesce to form a uniform background at large s, and the peak-to-background ratio is fixed right from the start. We fitted the model described above to the experimentally determined structure factors, taking into account the instrumental broadening and the extra intensity in reflections from crystallites with a preferred orientation aligned with the cell walls [18,19]. The resulting model curve is shown in Fig.…”

Bragg Rods and Multiple X-Ray Scattering in Random-Stacking Colloidal Crystals

“…In the x-ray field a new era has spawned by the advent of synchrotron radiation, which offers high-quality x-ray beams and has led to the development of 2D x-ray detectors. These now permit small-angle x-ray diffraction (SAXD) on colloidal single crystals [12] and allow us to achieve a resolution sufficient to determine long-range order parameters in high-quality crystals [13]. So far, the so-called kinematic theory, where it is assumed that diffraction is weak, has been used [12 -15] to describe x-ray diffraction patterns from colloidal crystals.…”