Silk inverse opals

Periodic nanostructures provide the facility to control and manipulate the flow of light through their lattices. Three-dimensional photonic crystals enable the controlled design of structural colour, which can be varied by infiltrating the structure with different (typically liquid) fillers. Here, we report three-dimensional photonic crystals composed entirely of a purified natural protein (silk fibroin). The biocompatibility of this protein, as well as its favourable material properties and ease of biological functionalization, present opportunities for otherwise unattainable device applications such as bioresorbable integration of structural colour within living tissue or lattice functionalization by means of organic and inorganic material doping. We present a silk inverse opal that demonstrates a pseudo-photonic bandgap in the visible spectrum and show its associated structural colour beneath biological tissue. We also leverage silk's facile dopability to manufacture a gold nanoparticle silk inverse opal and demonstrate patterned heating mediated by enhancement of nanoparticle absorption at the band-edge frequency of the photonic crystal.