Fabrication of multifunctional SnO2 and SiO2-

SnO2 inverse opal structures with prominent

photonic band gap properties
Sriram Guddala, K. Shadak Alee, and D. Narayana Rao*
School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad-500046, India
*[email protected]

Abstract: We present here a simple two step infiltration and calcination

involved technique to obtain high optical quality inverse opal structures of
SiO2, SnO2 and SiO2-SnO2 binary oxide inverse opal structures. Scanning
electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and
X-ray diffraction measurements are carried out to investigate the structural
features of the opals. High resolution TEM measurements reveal the
uniform distribution of SnO2 nanocrystals throughout the inverse opal
matrix. Optical properties along with theoretical fitting reveal the interesting
photonic band gap features of the opals with high optical quality as well as
the high porosity of these structures. The well-known multifunctional
properties of SnO2 like photorefractivity, low phonon energy for
luminescent materials and gas sensing features show the advantages of these
inverse opal structures can be favorable in the development of photonics
and sensors.
© 2013 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (050.5298) Photonic crystals; (130.0130) Integrated optics; (160.4670) Optical
materials; (220.4241) Nanostructure fabrication.

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1. Introduction
Materials with periodic variation of dielectric constant (or refractive index) on the length
scales of optical region in 1D, 2D or 3D are called photonic crystals (PhCs) [1–4]. These
materials are known to be optical analogue of usual semiconductor crystals, which contain

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periodic arrangement of atoms or molecules on atomic length scale with a definite band gap
for the electron motion. Similarly, the property by virtue of which makes the new periodic
dielectric materials or PhCs to possess a forbidden region for the propagation of
electromagnetic waves of any polarization in any direction for some frequency range, known
as complete photonic band gap (PBG) [1]. The ease of steering the light with these PhCs, for
the optical wavelengths meeting the Bragg diffraction, has opened the field of photonics with
the development of wide range of studies on fabrication of low loss optical waveguides [5],
electrically pumped ultra-low threshold lasers [6], optical switches [7] and chemical and
biochemical sensors [8] etc. In this regard, several lithographic and self assembly techniques
are being under study since past few decades for the fabrication of these PhCs [4,9–11].
However, self assembly based on vertical deposition technique has been a great attention
because of its significant low cost and ease of fabrication of high quality opal films with large
area and well oriented crystal domains. In this technique, the structures are grown from their
building blocks of submicron dimension spheres in uniform thin films of face centered cubic
(fcc) lattice crystals [4,12,13] called colloidal crystals. These crystals are known to present
only a pseudo PBG, a forbidden region for certain directions of electromagnetic wave
propagation for a certain frequency range [1]. Nevertheless, it still has interesting optical
properties that are responsible for the brilliant appearance of natural opals, because of which
the colloidal crystals are called as opals. Moreover, it turns out that the inverse structure, with
fcc patterned air holes in high dielectric with resultant high index contrast, can have a
complete PBG. Theoretically it was predicted that to attain the complete PBG with an fcc
lattice of air spheres in a dielectric medium, a refractive index contrast of ≥2.8 is required
[13]. In this regard, several inverse opal structures were developed with air spheres in the
backbones of high refractive index materials like Si, Ge, GaAs, GaP, and InP, which show a
complete PBG for infrared wavelength region and SnS2, Ta3N5 and Sb2S3 for visible range
wavelengths [14–16]. There are few more reports on the experimental results regarding the
fabrication of PhCs with the infiltration of highly luminescent materials like CdS, CdSe, ZnS,
etc [17,18]. Some kind of binary matrix systems were also realized with a mixture of
polystyrene, PMMA beads to obtain a highly porous material to have high index contrast.
Wang and associates [19] have synthesized highly porous binary inverse opal with a
combination of meso and macroporous cavities. Though the index contrast is not enough for
these structures to open the complete PBG, various luminescent materials can be filtered in
and achieve control over its emission features in these opal architects. On the other hand,
Hwang and associates [20] had fabricated a multistack opal structure by controlled deposition
of materials with various refractive indexes. The resulted structure can work as a broadband
optical filter. One can also make use of the opals of the high porosity to incorporate noble
metal nanoparticles like gold, silver and copper to study the interesting unified features of
plasmonic and PBG features [12]. Moreover, the high surface area property of inverse opal
structure also can facilitate the structure to behave as a good gas sensor for various gases like
CO2, N2 and alcohol vapors, etc. Moreover, the use of colloidal lithography based on self-
assembly via rapid convective deposition [21,22] had also resulted in ability to form
monolayer 2-D hexagonal close-packed microlens arrays in organic LEDs [23] and GaN-
based LEDs [23–25] leading to improved light extraction efficiency and power conversion
efficiency. This method had led to uniform self-assembly colloidal deposition in wafer scale
regions, which had been implemented in real device technologies [21–25].
In this communication, we focus on the synthesis and optical characterization of inverse
opal structures of SiO2 and materials with multifunctional features like conductivity, sensing,
and photorefractive properties, which can facilitate the resultant system in the field of
photovoltaics, sensors and integrated optics, etc. To meet these requirements SnO2 and SiO2-
SnO2 binary oxide inverse opal systems are developed by a simple two step infiltration and
calcination process. The incorporation of maximum amount of SnO2 in SiO2 would be highly

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beneficial to employ these structures in the field of silica based integrated optics because of
the photorefractive properties of SnO2.
2. Experimental
The fabrication of inverse opal structure involves two steps. The first step involves the
fabrication of polystyrene (PS) opal and the second, slow infiltration of the PS opal with the
desired oxide sol and controlled calcinations of the PS beads to obtain the inverse opal
structure of oxide matrix.
The infiltration of the oxide sol in the PS opal was carried out using a dip coater controlled
with Newport ESP300 Universal Motion Controller. The calcination of the samples was
performed in Lenton laboratory furnace. The optical transmission spectra and variable angle
reflection spectra were measured using a double beam UV-Vis/NIR spectrophotometer
(JASCO V-670). The structural parameters were investigated using Zeiss Ultra-55 field
emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM). The X-ray diffraction studies were
performed with INEL X-ray spectrometer using Co Kα radiation (λ = 1.7889 Å). TECNAI G2
FEI F12 transmission electron microscope (TEM) was used to observe the multilayer structure
and amorphous or crystalline phase of the infiltrated oxide matrix of the colloidal crystals.
2.1 Fabrication of polystyrene opal structure
A bare PS opal was first grown by the vertical deposition technique [Figs. 1(a) & 1(b)] [26].
In this technique initially a 3 ml aqueous solution of homemade monosized 320 nm diameter
PS spheres (Fig. 1(a) inset) of 1.9 mg/cc was taken in a 5 ml beaker. Then a clean and
hydrophilized glass substrate of 3cm × 1cm was kept at 45° angle in PS spheres’ solution and
left at a temperature of 50 °C and a relative humidity of 70%-80% for 48 hrs. During the
process of water evaporation the spheres get pulled towards the meniscus due to the capillary
forces and self-assemble into a fcc crystalline lattice. Though we can fabricate opals of nearly
30 layers over an area of 1 cm × 1 cm with very good uniformity, approximately 20 layers
was chosen as it provided us optimum speed of growth, well pronounced stop band depth and
transparency. The resulted structure was heat treated at 80 °C for 10 hrs to attain mechanical
stability and small necks between the spheres.
2.2 Fabrication of oxide inverse opal structure
2.2.1 Fabrication of inverse silica opal
The silica solution was obtained by mixing tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS), methanol,
deionized water and hydrochloric acid (HCl) as a catalyst. It was prehydrolyzed for 1h at 65
°C. A molar ratio of 1:0.01:2:33.8, was used for the TEOS: HCl: H2O: CH3OH mixture
[27,28]. The resulted sol was filtered using 0.22 μm filter. The sol was infiltrated into the 26%
air volume fraction of the PS spheres’ fcc lattice by using a dip-coating technique. In this
technique, the sample was immersed and withdrawn from the sol at a slow dip rate of 10
mm/min, and then it was dried at room temperature for 15 min prior to the next dip. The same
procedure was repeated for total of 3 cycles so that the total bare PS opal structure got
infiltrated with the silica solution. Prior to achieving the inverse opal structure the required
annealing temperatures were determined by performing the thermogravimetric analysis of
bare PS opals [12,29]. The thermogravimetric data showed us that PS spheres get completely
evaporated by annealing the matrix at 450 °C for 30 min. So, the sol infiltrated structure was
calcinated at 450 °C for 30 minutes and then brought it to the room temp at a ramp rate of 0.5
°C/min so that the PS spheres get evaporated and the silica matrix gets densified
simultaneously. At the end, we will be left with ordered air cavities in the backbone of silica
matrix by resembling a negative replica of PS opal [Figs. 1(c) &1(d)]. This type of structure is
known as the inverse silica opal (ISO).

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2.2.2 Fabrication of Tin oxide inverse opal
A transparent methanol colloidal suspension of SnCl2.2H2O precursor was prepared [27,28]
with 0.448 M and infiltrated through the PS opal and calcinated by following the same
fabrication protocol parameters like the ISO. The resulted structure with ordered air cavities in
the SnO2 matrix is shown in Fig. 2(a). This inverse SnO2 opal structure is labeled as ISnO in
the following text.
2.2.3 Fabrication of 75SiO2-25SnO2 inverse opal
The solutions of 75 mol % silica and 25 mol % tin oxide sols were refluxed for 16h at room
temperature to obtain binary oxide 75SiO2-25SnO2 transparent sol. Then the filtered solution
was infiltrated through the bare PS opal and calcinated, like the protocol followed for the ISO
and ISnO, to obtain an inverse 75SiO2-25SnO2 opal (ISSnO).
3. Results and discussion
3.1 Structural properties

Fig. 1. (a) Top view and (b) cross-sectional view of bare PS opal. (c) Top view and (d) cross-
sectional view of ISO. The inset of Fig. 1(c) shows the high magnification of ISO with air
spheres and triangular lattice holes (black arrow) which are resultant of former contacts
between the spheres.

Figure 1 shows the SEM images of homemade PS beads, bare PS opal and ISO top and cross-
sectional view. The size of the spheres is found to be ~330 (± 5) nm with a relative standard
deviation of 2%. During the self assembly process by vertical deposition technique, the PS
beads assemble in multilayer structure in (111) plane facet of fcc lattice at normal direction to
the substrate surface [12]. This is evident from Figs. 1(a) & 1(b), where Fig. 1(a) shows the
hexagonal arrangement of spheres at the top surface while Fig. 1(b) shows the ABCABC...…
type layers pattern of the PS beads [4,26] along the thickness of the sample. It is also evident
that the opals have attained higher dimension domains with very few structural defects like
point and line defects, which are unavoidable during the colloidal crystal growth [6].

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 Figures 1(c) & 1(d) show the similar top and cross-sectional view of ISO. These images
show a clear indication that the inverse opal structures are simply a negative replica of bare
PS opals, where PS beads replaced by air spheres and air medium by infiltrated material.
From the inset of Fig. 1(c), the higher magnification image of the selected region, the size of
the air spheres is found to be ~280 (± 5) nm, which occupies the space of the PS beads before
going to be burnt out during calcination. The size of the air spheres is found to be less than the
size of the original PS beads. This is not surprising as the infiltrated medium and PS beads are
mesoporous, and the water vapor gets released from these pores during the calcination leading
to shrinkage and hence the size of the air cavity (D). The inverse opal structures are associated
with additional air holes (Fig. 1(c) inset), which are formed at the former contact points
(necks) between the polystyrene spheres of the template and their arrangement on a triangular
lattice shows an fcc array of the whole ISO structure. These holes are represented with a black
arrow in the high magnification image of ISO (Fig. 1(c) inset). The Fig. 1(c) also shows the
high homogeneity of the ISO over more than 20 μm2 area. Moreover these features indicate
the high porosity of the structure of almost of 74% because of its solid PS spheres
replacement by air spheres in its fcc lattice structure.

Fig. 2. SEM image shows the (111) facet of (a) ISnO and (b) ISSnO. The white circled regions
in (b) correspond to mesoporous cavities observed in case of ISSnO, the inset of Fig. 2(b) also
shows the high magnification image of the mesoporous cavities.

Figure 2 shows the inverse opal structures of SnO2 and 75SiO2-25SnO2 compositions. In
detail, the ISnO shown in Fig. 2(a) resembles the ISO structure with air spheres’ diameter of
~250 (± 5) nm. The reduction in cavity size compared to the ISO might be due to the
differences in the expansion/compression levels of silica and SnO2 materials.
Figure 2(b) shows the top surface view of 75SiO2-25SnO2 inverse opal structure like ISnO
with air sphere diameter of ~285 (± 5) nm. The variation in size compared to both ISO and
ISnO could be due to combinational physical properties of SiO2 and SnO2 matrices in this
binary oxide 75SiO2-25SnO2 composition, especially the high porosity of the 75SiO2-25SnO2
medium which gets reduced during calcination. Moreover, in case of ISSnO, an additional
triangular cavity is observed in between every three air spheres combination. These cavities
are shown with white circled regions in Fig. 2(b). These additional mesoporous cavities show
a possible increase in the porosity of the inverse opal structure compared to other two inverse
opal structures of ISO and ISnO. The consequent optical properties of ISSnO are discussed in
the next section 3.2 on optical characterization. The choice of 75SiO2-25SnO2 composition
was opted from our earlier reports on fabrication of planar waveguide by sol-gel technique
[27,28], as it supports a single mode for the C-band wavelength (1.54 μm) propagation with
low propagation losses.

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 Fig. 3. (a) TEM image of ISnO with SAED pattern in the inset; (b) HRTEM image indicates
the nanocrystals of SnO2 with ~4 (± 1) nm dimension; (c) TEM image of ISSnO with SAED
pattern indicates the amorphous phase of the matrix; (d) XRD spectra of ISO, ISnO and ISSnO.

Figure 3 shows the TEM measurements performed on ISnO and ISSnO with a tilt of 25° to
the electron beam incidence to the (111) facet of our opal’s fcc lattice. The multilayer pattern
of crystal lattice can be observed very clearly. In the case of ISnO (Fig. 3(a)), the matrix SnO2
is found to contain nanocrystals to a maximum extent with uniform distribution of
nanocrystals throughout the matrix. Figure 3(b) shows high resolution TEM (HRTEM) image
with lattice fringes corresponding to SnO2 nanocrystals of ~4 (± 1) nm in diameter. The
selected area electron diffraction (SAED) in the inset of Fig. 3(a) shows the evidence of glass-
ceramic phase of the SnO2, which was further confirmed by XRD studies. In the case of
ISSnO, Fig. 3(c), there is no evidence of SnO2 nanocrystals formation. The SAED pattern also
emphasizes the pure amorphous phase of the ISSnO composition.
From the XRD spectra shown in Fig. 3(d), the spectrum of ISnO composed of diffraction
peaks corresponding to casseterite phase of SnO2 (JCPDS card no. 77-0452) with the peak
maxima at 31.2°, 39.1° and 63.8° corresponding to (110), (101) and (220) planes respectively.
The presence of broad band centered at 30.12° along with broad diffraction peaks is an
indication that a part of SnO2 is still in amorphous phase, which is also evident from the TEM
measurements shown in Fig. 3(a). The XRD spectrum corresponding to ISSnO simply
consists of a broad band centered at 27.16° without any diffraction peaks indicating the purely
amorphous nature of the 75SiO2-25SnO2 matrix. This is also evident from the TEM studies
shown in Fig. 3(c). The XRD spectrum of amorphous ISO is also included in Fig. 3(d) to
make the comparison with respect to ISSnO. The absence of SnO2 nanocrystals in ISSnO is an
indication that the formation of nanocrystals depends on the dispersion amount of SnO2 in the

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silica phase. This is more evident from the reports of Bhaktha et al. [28] that the
crystallization of SnO2 in 75SiO2-25SnO2 systems was observed at the temperature of 900°C.
3.2 Optical characterization
In this section, the photonic band gap (PBG) properties of the colloidal crystals were studied
by measuring its optical transmission spectra and the angle dependent reflection spectra,
which are shown in Fig. 4. Optical transmittance spectra (Fig. 4(a)) of bare PS opal and
inverse opal structures were collected with 2 mm diameter spot size for the light beam and
spectral resolution of 0.2 nm.

Fig. 4. (a) Optical transmittance of bare PS opal and inverse opal structures. (b) Reflectance
spectra of inverse opal structures at 5° angle of incidence to the normal of (111) plane. (c) &
(d) show an angle resolved reflectance of ISO and ISnO, where the behavior of (111) and
(111) planes along with its theoretical fit (thick line) for Eq. (1) and Eq. (3) respectively.

The strong reduction in the optical transmission curves of respective bare PS and inverse
opal structures correspond to the stop bands, the position of which can be calculated using the
modified Bragg formula given by [12,13,17]
λ = 2 × 0.816 × D × (neff
2
− Sin 2θ )1/2 (1)

where
2
neff = (1 − f ) × nair
2
+ f × nmedium
2
(2)

and D refers to diameter of the spheres and θ represents the angle between the direction of
incident light and the normal to the (111) plane of fcc lattice of crystal. ‘f’ refers the filling
fraction of the opal. neff is the effective refractive index of the crystal, where nair and nmedium are
the refractive indices of the air and solid medium of the opal respectively.
The behavior due to (hkl) planes of colloidal crystals other than (111) plane can be
explained by the equation [26,30]

#182411 - $15.00 USD Received 2 Jan 2013; revised 8 Feb 2013; accepted 8 Feb 2013; published 12 Feb 2013
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 λhkl = 2d hkl neff [1 − sin 2 ( β − arcsin(sin θ / neff ))]1/2 (3)

where dhkl refers to the inter-planar spacing for (hkl) planes and β is the angle between the
normals of (111) and any other (hkl) plane.
From Fig. 4(a), the depth of the PBGs for PS, ISO, ISnO and ISSnO are found to be 53%
and 35%, 25% and 30% respectively. These are the best ever reported values of stop band
depths for any inverse opal structure. Thus our simple two step process is an indicator for the
fabrication of high quality opals with prominent stop band depths. Figure 4(b) shows the
reflectance spectra of ISO, ISSnO, and ISnO measured at 5° angle of incidence to the sample
surface. The reflection spectra of each opal associated with a band centered at certain
wavelength is a resultant of diffraction by the set of planes, where the parameters of D, neff
and θ satisfies the Bragg diffraction given in Eq. (1). The corresponding parameters for each
opal are reported in the Table 1. The refractive index contrast of the each opal structure was
calculated by taking the ratio for mediums of high refractive index to the lower one.
Figures 4(c) & 4(d) show an angle dependent reflectance spectra of ISO and ISnO
measured with white light beam incidence at θo to the (111) plane of fcc lattice varied from 5°
to 60°. The angle dependent reflectance behavior was understood by fitting the experimental
observations to the Eq. (1). The fitting resulted to the approximation of values like PS/air
sphere diameter D and effective refractive index of the opal neff. A similar angle dependent
reflectance behavior was observed in the case of ISSnO (not reported here) also, the
approximated values of D and neff are reported in Table 1. The values of air sphere diameter
(D) for the opals are in agreement with the values measured from SEM studies as shown in
Figs. 1 & 2. Along with optical properties, a long range periodicity also can be observed from
SEM studies which further prove the high structural and optical quality of our inverse opal
structures.
From Figs. 4(c) & 4(d), the red filled circles represent the diffraction maxima due to
(111) plane of the crystal, which move towards longer wavelength with the increase of angle
of incidence, the behavior of which can be understood by fitting the observations to the Eq.
(3). A similar behavior of angle resolved reflection features due to multiple planes was
observed in case of all our opal structures, but only the ISO and ISnO are reported here. In the
case of ISnO (Fig. 4(d)), the angle dependent reflectance behavior is evident from initial
angles to higher angles but in the rest of the opals the behavior is limited over some range.
From the theoretical fitting of Eq. (3) to the (111) plane, the values of dhkl and β are estimated
as 210 nm and 70° respectively. From Fig. 4(c), the observation of two overlapped reflection
band maxima at 35° due to the diffraction by two planes (111) and (111) is attributed to the
phenomenon of wave coupling that occurs when the incident wave vectors reaches the U/K
point of the reduced Brillouin zone of fcc lattice [26,30,31]. The same phenomenon of wave
coupling was observed in case of ISSnO and ISnO at 36° and 37.5° respectively.
Table 1. Optical and structural parameters of bare PS and inverse opal structures

nhigh λ max ΔλThe

System n f cal D (± 5) nm neff nm
nlow Δ λExp
(for θ = 5°)
PS opal 1.59 0.74 325 1.46 1.59 770 0.82
ISO 1.45 0.74 280 1.13 1.45 516 0.88
ISSnO 1.52 0.85 287 1.09 1.52 504 0.90
ISnO 1.72 0.74 254 1.24 1.72 507 1.15
fcal refers to filling fraction of solid PS spheres for bare PS opal and air hollow spheres for inverse opals respectively.

The refractive index of 1.52 was obtained for 75SiO2-25SnO2 composition by using
Lorentz-Lorentz equation [27,28], with the values of nSiO2 = 1.45 and nSnO2 = 1.72. From the
theoretical fitting of Eq. (1) to the experimentally observed angle dependent reflectance

#182411 - $15.00 USD Received 2 Jan 2013; revised 8 Feb 2013; accepted 8 Feb 2013; published 12 Feb 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 1 March 2013 / Vol. 3, No. 3 / OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS 415
measurement of ISSnO, the parameters of D and neff are approximated as 287 nm and 1.09
respectively. From Eq. (2), the value of neff for the ISSnO with nmedium = 1.52 and f = 0.26 is
expected to be 1.16. The observed value for neff as 1.09 supports the change in the filling
fraction value of medium. From Eq. (2), the filling fraction of air and dielectric medium are
found to be 0.85 and 0.15 respectively, which supports the value of neff as 1.09. The increase
in filling fraction from the usual 0.74 to 0.85 can be explained as due to the observation of
additional triangular air cavity between every three air spheres. These additional air holes are
highlighted by a black arrow in the high magnification FESEM image of ISSnO (Fig. 2(b)
inset). This explains the high porosity of the ISSnO structure as well in comparison to ISO
and ISnO.
A theoretical model was proposed by Tarhan and Watson [31] for the calculation of full
width at half maximum (FWHM: Δλ) of the PBG, which depends on the refractive index
contrast 'δnc' and the volume fraction 'f' of material/background. The values of f and n from
Table 1 were used for the theoretical calculation of FWHM for the PS opal, ISO, ISSnO and
ISnO. The value of Δλ from the theoretical is consistent with the experimental value, which is
tabulated in Table 1, by calculating the ratio of their respective Δλ for each opal. However,
some small variations are expected due to the presence of defects such as cracks, dislocations
and missing of spheres which are unavoidable during the fabrication of colloidal crystals [32].
These improved optical properties further confirm the opal structures grown by our simple
two step fabrication process are high in optical and structural quality.
The nanocrystals of SnO2 have indirect band gap [33] and help with possible energy
transfer from ultraviolet region to nearby luminescent materials by the well-known Förster
resonance energy transfer (FRET) mechanism [34], with application in the designing of solar
cells. The SnO2 nanocrystals are also known for its maximum phonon energy [28] of
<630cm−1, which favors the reduction of non-radiative relaxation of doped luminescent
materials. In addition to the low phonon energy, photonic crystal architecture can also
enhance the quantum yield of the doped luminescent material in these nanocrystals
particularly at the photonic band edge. Recently it is also proposed by Lu et.al [35] that the
property of randomly oriented SnO2 NCs in 3D PhC can act like amplifying media to observe
a new kind of lasing action called random lasing in these PhC structures. The presence of
SnO2 nanocrystals can also show the conductivity behavior, which can make the PhC
architectures in the development of electroluminescence based applications. The SnO2 is also
known for its photorefractivity [36], the property of which can make these structures more
promising in the field of integrated optics. The dispersion of such SnO2 in silica PhCs like our
75SiO2-25SnO2 can make this system a potential candidate for integrated optics [27,28,35,36].
Moreover the high porosity of our opal structures, obtained by our simple two step infiltration
and controlled calcinations process, can also find application in the development of highly
durable gas sensors [37].
4. Conclusions
In conclusion, we have developed a simple two step sol-gel technique to fabricate ISO
structures with highest ever reported stop gap depth of 35% and inverse opal structures of
SnO2 and its silica based binary oxide composites. The structural properties studied by
FESEM, TEM and XRD reveal the high structural quality and porosity of these structures.
The optical properties illustrate the interesting photonic crystal features and high porosity of
the structures from 74%-85%. Moreover the observed high porosity of the structures indicates
its applications in the biomedical area and sensors. The agreements of the experimental results
with theoretical results imply the high optical quality and indicate the implementation of the
opals in the development of sensors, novel laser systems and integrated optics.

#182411 - $15.00 USD Received 2 Jan 2013; revised 8 Feb 2013; accepted 8 Feb 2013; published 12 Feb 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 1 March 2013 / Vol. 3, No. 3 / OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS 416
Acknowledgments
This work was carried under the frame work of DST sanctioned ITPAR Phase-II project and
UGC sponsored UPE Phase-II project. S. Guddala would like to acknowledge the financial
support of UGC sponsored Basic Science Research (BSR) fellowship.

#182411 - $15.00 USD Received 2 Jan 2013; revised 8 Feb 2013; accepted 8 Feb 2013; published 12 Feb 2013
(C) 2013 OSA 1 March 2013 / Vol. 3, No. 3 / OPTICAL MATERIALS EXPRESS 417