Fabricating colloidal crystals and construction of ordered nanostructures

Colloidal crystals of polymeric or inorganic microspheres are of extensive interest due to their potential applications in such as sensing, optics, photonic bandgap and surface patterning. The article highlights a set of approaches developed in our group, which are efficient to prepare colloidal crystals with ordered voids, patterned colloidal crystals on non-planar surfaces, heterogeneous colloidal crystals of different building blocks, colloidal crystals composed of non-spherical polyhedrons, and colloidal crystals of non-close-packed colloidal microspheres in particular. The use of these colloidal crystals as templates for different microstructures range from nanoscale to micron-scale is also summarized.