Sol-gel fabrication of one-dimensional photonic crystals

One-dimensional multilayer structures of periodically alternating low refractive index (silica) and high refractive index (titania) materials have been deposited by a solgel spin coating technique. These structures have been characterized by visible-near-IR spectroscopy with different angles of incident light falling. As an example, theoretical and experimental spectra with a stop band corresponding 600 nm-reflection are investigated in details. The possibility of creating an optical filter by introducing a structural defect in the form of a layer of double thickness is shown theoretically and experimentally. All experimental spectra are in agreement with theoretical spectra calculated by transfer matrix method. The appropriate program for multilayer spectra calculation in NI LabVIEW environment is also described.