Colloidal silica spheres with 290 nm diameters were self-assembled with single crystal crystallites 4-5 mm wide and 10-15 mm long. Larger spheres with diameters between 1000 and 2300 nm were self-assembled with single crystal crystallites up to 1.5 mm wide and 2 mm long. The silica opals self-assembled vertically along the [100] direction of the face centered cubic lattice resulting in self-templated opals. Inverse opal photonic crystals with a partial band gap possessing a maximum in the near infrared at 3.8 urn were constructed from opal templates composed of 2300 nm diameter spheres with chalcogenide Ge_(33)As_(12)Se_(55) (AMTIR-1). Inverse gold photonic crystals were fabricated from synthetic opal templates composed of 290 nm silica spheres.
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