Anisotropic Resonant Scattering from Polymer Photonic Crystals

Hyperspectral goniometry reveals anisotropic scattering which dominates the visual appearance of self-assembled polymer opals. The technique allows reconstruction of the reciprocal-space of nanostructures, and indicates that chain defects formed during shear-ordering are responsible for the anisotropy in these samples. Enhanced scattering with improving order is shown to arise from increased effective refractive index contrast, while broadband background scatter is suppressed by absorptive dopants. Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”. Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.