Tailoring Luminescence Properties of Silica-Based Er3+-Activated Inverse Opals

Since the concept of photonic crystals (PCs) was first mentioned by Yablonovich and John in 1987, these structures have attracted considerable attention in the fields of sensors waveguides, PC fibers. Referring to 3D PCs a specific kind of systems are the so-called opals (or colloidal crystals); in particular focusing the attention on inverse colloidal crystals these structures are attracting attention due to their optical, structural and physical properties, such as high surface-to-volume ratio and three-dimensional (3D) ordered microporous structure. Moreover, considering Rare Earths (RE) ions embedded in dielectric matrices, their peculiar optical properties such as sharp line emissions, long lifetime constants and high quantum yields make them good candidates to investigate the PCs modulation on spontaneous emission. In this paper, we present the procedure employed for the realization of Er3+-doped silica inverse opals obtained using a polystyrene (PS) template by the sol-gel method. We discuss their optical, structural by comparing the experimental data and numerical simulations for a better interpretation of the experimental results. Finally we investigate, by comparison with reference samples (ErRef) the effect of inverse opal modulation on concentration quenching