Preparation of the gold infiltrated silica opals by electroplating method

Highly mono-dispersed silica microspheres are fabricated and assembled by a force packing method to form opals with large domain sizes. The opals are then infiltrated with gold by electroplating technique. The SEM images showed the gold nanoparticles could be directly deposited on the surface of silica spheres and the voids among the silica spheres in the opaline structure. The optical properties of the infiltrated opals in the visible range are studied in detail. The gold infiltrated silica opals could provide a simple way to tune the opal properties through controlling the ration of gold in the silica opal.