The Preparation And Self-assembled Of Monodisperse Porous Polymer Particles

Photonic crystals (PCs) are materials with a periodically modulated dielectric constant in the micron or sub-micron light wavelengths range. Since 1987 when E.Yablonovitch and S.John put forward the conception - photonic crystals, it became a research hotspot in the applied physics and material science. It has very wide application future because of its photonic band gap which can adjust the photon transmission. It is a simple route to prepare three-dimensional photonic crystals in the visible and near-infrared wavelengths, because colloidal crystals have the sub-micron crystal lattice and periodical dielectric structure.Monodisperse core-shell poly (styrene-divinylbenzene) latex particle of different particle diameters with porous structure was synthesized in the presence of toluene and n-hexane as diluents for monomer to form porous structure based on traditional emulsion polymerization. These highly charged monodisperse particles are easy to be self-assembled into three-dimensionally ordered colloidal crystal by vertical deposition and high humidity methods. The results were characterized by Zetasizer, TEM, SEM and UV-vis spectrophotometer. We discussed the synthesis and the self-assembled conditions and compared the optical properties of colloidal crystals self-assembled by different polymer particles. The results showed the porous polymer particles had good monodispersity and the pores were distributed symmetrically on the surface. The highly ordered colloidal crystalline arrays exhibit perfect hexagonal closed-packed (hcp) and well-defined body-centered cubic (bcc) structure. And the optical properties of colloidal crystals were improved.