Fabrication of mesoscale polymeric templates for three-dimensional disordered photonic materials

We report on the mesoscale fabrication and characterization of polymeric templates for isotropic photonic materials derived from hyper-uniform point patterns using direct laser writing in a polymer photoresist. We study experimentally the microscopic structure by electron microscopy and small angle light scattering. Reducing the refractive index mismatch by liquid infiltration we find good agreement between the scattering data and numerical calculations in the single scattering limit. Our work thus demonstrates the feasibility of fabricating such random designer materials on technologically relevant length scales. (c) 2013 Optical Society of America