Structural characterization of colloidal crystals and inverse opals using transmission X-ray microscopy

Bo-Han Huang; Chun-Chieh Wang; Chen-Hong Liao; Pu-Wei Wu; Yen-Fang Song

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2014.03.063

Structural characterization of colloidal crystals and inverse opals using transmission X-ray microscopy

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2014 Jul 15:426:199-205. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2014.03.063. Epub 2014 Apr 2.

Authors

Bo-Han Huang¹, Chun-Chieh Wang², Chen-Hong Liao³, Pu-Wei Wu⁴, Yen-Fang Song⁵

Affiliations

¹ Graduate Program for Science and Technology of Accelerator Light Source, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan, ROC.
² National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, Hsinchu 30076, Taiwan, ROC.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan, ROC.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan, ROC. Electronic address: ppwu@mail.nctu.edu.tw.
⁵ National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, Hsinchu 30076, Taiwan, ROC. Electronic address: song@nsrrc.org.tw.

PMID: 24863783
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2014.03.063

Abstract

A nondestructive tomographic technique was used to determine the crystallographic information of colloidal crystals comprising of polystyrene (PS) microspheres, as well as their silver inverse opals. The properties of the colloidal crystals, such as defects, grain size, grain boundaries, stacking sequence, and grain orientation, were determined using the full field transmission X-ray microscopy (TXM) with a spatial resolution of 50 nm. The PS microspheres (500-750 nm) which underwent a vertical electrophoresis process to form a face-centered cubic (fcc) close-packed structure with an ABCABC packing sequence. In addition, the colloidal crystal exhibited multiple grains, and an orientation variation of 6.1° in the stacking direction between two neighboring grains.

Keywords: Colloidal crystal; Electrophoresis; Inverse opal; Polystyrene microspheres; Transmission X-ray microscopy.