Fabrication of Artificial Crystal Architectures by Micro-Manipulation of Spherical Particles.

Materials with three-dimensional periodic structures have the potential to produce photonic effects such as photonic crystals. We therefore developed a fabrication technique for such structured materials through assembly of monosized spherical micro-particles. First, a three-dimensional particle array system was designed and manufactured. In this system, a robotic micro-manipulator accurately positions spherical particles onto the lattice points, and subsequently, fiber lasers micro-weld contact points between neighboring particles. One-dimensional arrays were constructed using monosized tin particles with the diameter of 400 um. Moreover, on the basis of optimized laser conditions, we successfully constructed three-dimensional crystals such as those of diamond structures. The diamond structure, in particular, is expected to evolve towards a practical photonic crystal device, since it possesses the largest photonic band gap among all the crystal structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]