Effect of annealing on parameters of synthetic opal

Abstract

We report on the effect of high temperature annealing on the reflection spectra of synthetic opals. The analysis of conditions for simultaneous diffraction on the (111) planes parallel and inclined to the sample surface has shown that both annealed and unannealed opals are compressed along the growth [111] axis and the shape of the SiO2 balls forming the opals' close packed structure can be described as spheroidal. The structure parameters were evaluated from the analysis of the angular dependences of the peak positions in the Bragg reflection spectra of unfilled and glycerol-filled samples. The major effect of annealing is due to the sintering (interpenetration) of the structural elements of opals. The maximum temperature of 1050 °C leads to a 10-fold increase in the degree of spheroid sintering. As a result, the interspheroid spacing decreases by over 10%, while the filling factor increases from 0.75 to 0.96 together with the effective dielectric constant of the opal as a whole (from 1.74 to 2.08). Sintering takes place not only between spheroids, but also inside spheroids between the α-SiO2 nanoparticles constituting them. This results in a noticeable (by ∼7%) increase in the dielectric constant of opal spheroids.