Photoluminescence of ZnO infiltrated into a three-dimensional photonic crystal

The effect of the photonic band gap (stopband) of the photonic crystal, the synthesized SiO₂ opal with embedded zinc oxide, on its luminescence in the violet spectral region is studied. It is shown that the position of the photonic band gap in the luminescence and reflectance spectra of the infiltrated opal depends on the diameter of the constituent nanoglobules, the volume fraction of zinc oxide, and on the signal’s acceptance angle. It is found that, for the ZnO-opal nanocomposites, the emission intensity is decreased and the luminescence decay time is increased in the spatial directions, in which the photonic band gap coincides in spectral position with the luminescence peak of zinc oxide. The change in the decay time can be attributed to the change in the local density of photonic states in the photonic band gap.