Photonic crystals (PCs), also known as photonic band-gap materials, are periodic dielectic materials which can control the movement of photons through the crystal. In recent years, PCs materials have aroused great attention and shown many promising applications for active photonic devices, fiber optical communication, photonic computer and etc.    

Recently, researchers from the key Laboratory of Organic Solids and Laboratory of New Materials have successfully fabricated functional photonic crystals and developed a series of active optical devices with highly efficacious properties.  For instance, they fabricated PCs films with high strength by using latex spheres with a hard PS core and an elastometric PMMA/PAA shell（Macromol. Chem. Phys.,2006, 6, 596-604, Cover）, as well as polyimide inverse opal PCs with special closed-cell structure by using the core–shell structure colloidal spheres as the template, which show high stability and tough mechanical properties under high temepture（J. Mater. Chem., 2008, 18, 2262-2267）. They further developed PCs which various tunable properties including their wetting, optical or electric properties （Chem. Mater.,2006, 18, 4984-4986; Macromol. Rapid Commun., 2006, 27,188-192; Adv. Funct. Mater., 2007, 17, 219-225, Inside cover; Chem. Mater., 2008, 20, 3554-3556）, which present great potential in the detection of the environment humidity ( J. Mater. Chem.,2008, 18, 1116-1122, Cover) and the quantity of the oils (Adv. Funct. Mater., 2008, in press; J. Mater. Chem.,2008, DOI :10.1039/b808675c）.  By using the PCs’ superior properties, they also fabricated an optimum wavelength-selective photonic crystal concentrator to improve the output power of a dye-sensitized solar cell by more than 5 times (J. Mater. Chem.,2008, 18, 2650-2652, Inside cover) , and improved the efficiency of the energy transfer across a metal film by a magnitude (Appl. Phys. Lett., 2007, 91, 203516).

   More recently, by utilizing a PC to amplify the read-out optical signal, they have developed an optical DNA detection system based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). The modified detection with an optimized PC could achieve ultrasensitivity down to 13.5 femtomolar - hundreds of times greater than that attained with conventional methods, and the selectivity can discriminate single base-pair mismatche between strands. The ultrasensitive and selectivity show great significance for early disease diagnosis and treatment of genetic and pathogenic diseases.  The work has been published in the recent issue of Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (2008, 47, 7258-7262), and has been highlighted by Nature China (http://www.nature.com/nchina/2008/080827/full/nchina.2008.201.html).

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2008, 47, 7258-7262。

DNA sequence detection based on a FRET mechanism and the effect of the PC on FRET

Emission spectra of dsDNA-Fl/EB and the PC effect on the FRET process