The fabrication of photonic band gap materials with a two-dimensional defect

Colloidal crystals with three-dimensional periodicities in the refractive index have a photonic band gap (PBG) in which electromagnetic waves are forbidden. We present a method to fabricate stacked colloidal crystals containing a two-dimensional defect as a middle layer by combining vertical deposition method with the Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) technique. The defect layer introduces an impurity mode within the optical stop band, which is observed as a defect peak (pass band) in the optical density spectrum. The result shows that the combination of vertical deposition with LB technique provides a way for introducing defect modes in PBG materials. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.