Photonic glasses: a step beyond white paint.
Self-assembly techniques are widely used to grow ordered structures such as, for example, opal-based photonic crystals. Here, we report on photonic glasses, new disordered materials obtained via a modified self-assembling technique. These random materials are solid thin films which exhibit rich novel light diffusion properties originating from the optical properties of their building blocks. This novel material inaugurated a wide range of nanophotonic materials with fascinating applications, such as resonant random lasers or Anderson localization.
García
Pedro David
PD
Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (CSIC), Madrid, Spain.
Sapienza
Riccardo
R
López
Cefe
C
D003460:Crystallization; D005898:Glass / Q000737:chemistry*; D008027:Light; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry*; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000379:methods*; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D017785:Photons