Preparation Of Monodispersed Polymethyl Metharylate(PMMA) And Self-assemble To Colloidal Crystal

Monodispersed colloidal particals are widely applied in the fields of optics, electronics, magnetics, biomedicine and so on. Colloidal crystals can be obtained for these particals can spontaneously orgnize into a crystalline array. With three-dimensional ordered periodic structure, colloidal crystal now become a quite important material known as photonic crystal, which has the behavior to light just like the semiconductor to electrons. In recent years, the photonic crystal has been a new focus of research, it is also used as a template to synthesize various functional macroporous materials with the anti-phrase structure. The macroporous materials with high reflection index is the proper candidate for the photonic crystal since it holds the merit of both functional character of solid and periodic ordered macroporous structure.In this paper, monodispersed polymethyl metharylate(PMMA) submicrospheres were synthesized by emulsifier-free emulsion polymerization. The effects of ion strength, polymerization temperature, initiator and monomer concentration on particle diameter were discussed. The final diameter of the submicrospheres were controlled at the range of visible light wavelength. At room temperature, simple procedure for producing highly ordered colloidal crystal was developed, and the solvent- free colloidal crystal were formed on the surface by electrostatic interaction, surface tension as well as the ion diffusion during the evaporation. Then use the colloidal crystal as template, and the sol-gel solution was infiltrated into the interstitial space of the colloidal crystal through capillary effect and ordered inverse opals were obtained after the solidification of the sol-gel solution and the calcification of the polymethyl metharylate beads.