Fabrication of inverse opal oxide structures for efficient light harvesting

Abstract: Artificial opals are self-assembled face centered cubic (fcc) structures of  spherically shaped beads, which interesting applications as photonic band gap materials. Inverse opals are photonic crystals consisting of fcc paced voids of a low refractive index material imbedded in a high refractive index material. Such structures has been used to enhance the photocatalytic effect of different materials and motivates further studies to improve the deposition process of the opal templates and their inversion. We state the fabrication method to design and model metal oxide inverse opals. We have successfully created alumina and alumina-titania inverse opals. With the help of simulations, we engineered inverse opals with self-assembly and atomic layer deposition.