Amplified spontaneous emission from opal photonic crystals engineered with structural defects

In this work, we report on the optical properties and amplified spontaneous emissions (ASE) of polystyrene opals engineered with planar structural defects containing a conjugated polymer emitter. Defects in opals give rise to allowed states inside the photonic stop band, which are probed by transmittance and reflectance spectroscopy. The emission spectrum of the polymer embedded in the defect layer is strongly modified and fingerprints of defect states located inside the stop band are recognized. Amplified spontaneous emission for these engineered photonic crystals is clearly observed.