Preliminary studies of 3D Magnetophotonic Crystals designed from a template stuffed by sol-gel process

摘要

Based on the previous work of Nishijima [l], the aim of this work is to realize 3D magnetophotonic crystals (MPC) by a sol-gel approach, in order to obtain a magneto-optical material with a large merit factor. These MPC are made by immersion of an opal template of polystyrene spheres in a sol-gel TEOS preparation doped by magnetic nanoparticles. The template can be realized using centrifugation or sedimentation, and it is removed after the solidification of the doped matrix by an immersion in ethyl acetate.rnCalculations made on ID structures confirm that a periodic arrangement of a magneto-optical material is a way to increase the Faraday Rotation and the merite factor. The characterization of the samples is made by SEM and UV-VIS spectrophotometry. In virtue of the SEM pictures we can establish that the template is well-structured, what is confirmed by a Photonic Band Gap (PBG) in the spectrophotometry spectral. The central wavelength of the PBG depends on the size of the polystyrene spheres. The final MPC obtained with a silica matrix doped by maghemite nanoparticles has also well-structured areas. Ongoing works concern the study of the Farady rotation as a function of the wavelength.