Nanojewels made easy(o two-millimeter particles nanojewels. ...)

Velev and Rastogi of NCSU developed the method with help of several colleagues, including: Manuel Marquez, an adjunct professor in the Harrington Department of Bioengineering in ASU's Ira A. School of Engineering, and Antonio Garcia, a professor in the bioengineering department and director of the Laboratory for Personalized Molecule Measurement; and professors Sonia Melle and Oscar Calderon in the School of Optics at UCM.

Rastogi's presentation at the 82nd American Chemical Society Colloid & Surface Science Symposium on June 18, 2008 titled "Synthesis of Light-Diffracting Colloidal Crystal Assemblies from Microspheres and Nanoparticles in Droplets on a Superhydrophobic Surface" and a paper just published in the journal Advanced Materials (published Online: July 28, 2008), authored by these researchers, describes how for the first time superhydrophobic surfaces are shown to play an important role in making new materials.

In the paper, they describe how different nanoparticles of various sizes can produce "nanojewels" of various colors that display different optical properties.

"These nanojewels can potentially find application in photonics, drug delivery, special coatings, sensors and microfluidics," Velev explains.

Indeed, many researchers around the world are working on ways to make similar two-dimensional and three-dimensional photonic crystals to fabricate light-emitting diodes, optical fibers for communications, submicroscopic lasers, ultrawhite pigments, antennas and reflectors, and optical integrated circuits.

The biggest stumbling blocks in making these materials is finding ways of making photonic crystals with uniform properties in very large quantities and in minimizing imperfections in structure that reduce the quality of the final product.

This new process is certainly easy to replicate to make large quantities, and superhydrophobic surfaces lead to
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