Variation of a photonic crystal color with the Miller indices of the exposed surface

摘要

The optical reflectance of photonic-crystal films is revisited, while focussing on the variety of coloration produced by different surface orientations. The needed tools for this analysis are first described. These include a number of simple rules that help locating the useful spectral features of the photonic-crystal reflectance with a minimal knowledge of the structure, and make explicit a full multiple-scattering algorithm (often cited, but not explicitly described so far) for the precise computation of reflectance spectra. It is seen that a face-centered cubic structure of low refractive index can span a wide region of the chromaticity diagram with just a few high-symmetry surfaces.