Photonic Glasses: A Step Beyond White Paint

Self-assembly techniques are widely used to grow ordered structures such as, for example, opal-based photonic crystals. Here, we report on photonic glasses, new disordered materials obtained via a modified self-assembling technique. These random materials are solid thin films which exhibit rich novel light diffusion properties originating from the optical properties of their building blocks. This novel material inaugurated a wide range of nanophotonic materials with fascinating applications, such as resonant random lasers or Anderson localization.