Oana Pascu, José Manuel Caicedo, Martín López-García, Víctor Canalejas, Álvaro Blanco, Cefe López, Jordi Arbiol, Josep Fontcuberta, Anna Roig and Gervasi Herranz
Nanoscale, 2011, 3, 4811-4816
We report on an extremely fast and versatile synthetic approach, based on microwave assisted sol-gel chemistry, that allows a conformal nanometric coating of intricate three-dimensional structures. Using this methodology, we have achieved a conformal coverage of large areas of three-dimensional opals with a superparamagnetic manganese ferrite layer, yielding magneto-photonic crystals with excellent quality. The use of a ternary oxide for the ultrathin coating demonstrates the potential of this methodology to realize three-dimensional structures with complex materials that may find applications beyond photonics, such as energy, sensing or catalysis.
