Tailoring Air Defects in Self‐Assembled Photonic Bandgap Crystals

Introducing structural defects into photonic crystals is a challenge that must be met for many photonic applications. Here, a method is demonstrated to tailor the local structure of silicon inverse opals, prepared from the self-assembly of colloidal microspheres, by combining multiphoton photopolymerization and silsesquioxanes (see Figure).