抄録
This article describes an overview of the developments in fabrication methodologies of colloidal crystals
(CCs) as photonic crystals (PCs) and their laser applications. The CCs have intrinsic capabilities to selfassemble
the 3D-PC structure of micro-particles. When the periodic length in the CC structures
corresponds to several hundred nanometers of the visible light wavelength, the photonic band-gaps
(PBGs) can be visualized as reflection colors according to Bragg’s law. When combining light-emitting
organic dyes within the CC structures, the stimulated laser action at PBG wavelength edge or within
PBG wavelength range can be generated by optical excitation due to the PBG effect. Moreover, we
succeed in the demonstration of flexible and tunable laser action from the CC structures with lightemitting
organic dyes. The preset review highlights not only the research backgrounds of CCs as PCs,
but also the experimental results of our soft organic CC lasers.
