Semicrystalline woodpile photonic crystals without complicated alignment via soft lithography

We report the fabrication and characterization of woodpile photonic crystals with up to 12 layers through titania nanoparticle infiltration of a polymer template made by soft lithography. Because the complicated alignment in the conventional layer-by-layer fabrication associated with diamondlike symmetry is replaced by a simple 90° alignment, the fabricated photonic crystal has semicrystalline phase. However, the crystal performs similarly to a perfectly aligned crystal for the light propagation integrated from the surface normal to 30° at the main photonic band gap.