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Updated: Feb 22, 2026

Synthesis and Characterization of Supramolecular Colloids
Published on: April 22, 2016
Structural colour of unary and binary colloidal crystals probed by scanning transmission X-ray microscopy and optical
Hyun Woo Nho1,2, Tae Hyun Yoon3
1Department of Chemistry, College of Natural Sciences, Research Institute for Natural Sciences, Hanyang University, Seoul, 04762, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
Colloidal crystals composed of micro- or nano- colloids have been investigated in various fields such as photonics due to their unique optical properties. Binary colloidal crystals have an outstanding potential for fine-tuning material properties by changing the components, concentration, or size of colloids. Because of their tunable optical, electrical, magnetic, and mechanical properties, those materials attracted great attention. However, it has been hard to elucidate internal structures without fluorescent labelling or cross-sectioning. Here, we demonstrate the structural analysis of not only unary but also binary colloidal crystals using scanning transmission x-ray microscopy and compare the results with colloidal structures and optical properties observed by optical microscopy. Based on the comparison of images obtained by these two methods, the domains of colloidal crystals consisting of different structures and colours were directly identified without any additional sample preparation. Therefore, it was possible to investigate the structural colours of local domains of unary and binary colloidal crystals such as the face centred cubic (FCC) structure with different orientations, that is FCC (111) and FCC (001), and hexagonal close-packed structure, HCP (0001).
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