Glass-Derived Photonic Crystal Structures

In this paper we report on the fabrication and the characterization of colloidal systemsconsidering complementary structures based on responsive artificial opal both in direct and inverseconfiguration. We will discuss alternative systems such as: (i) chromatic composite structure aschemical sensor based on polystyrene (PS) nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in elastomeric matrix,where the application of specific organic solvents produces a variation of its color; (ii) metallicdielectric structures, where the infiltration of colloidal crystals with metallic nanoparticles permitsto modify the optical properties of the common opal and can be usefully exploited as SERSsubstrates; (iii) inverse silica opal functionalized with fluorescent aptamers in order to develop biosensorsin dye labelled fluorescence detection scheme