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J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1998, 120, 6518-6524
Synthesis of Highly Fluorinated Monodisperse Colloids for Low Refractive Index Crystalline Colloidal Arrays Guisheng Pan, Albert S. Tse,† R. Kesavamoorthy,‡ and Sanford A. Asher* Contribution from the Department of Chemistry, UniVersity of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PennsylVania 15260 ReceiVed February 12, 1998
Abstract: Highly charged fluorinated monodisperse spherical particles of diameters between 50 and 250 nm were synthesized from 1H,1H-heptafluorobutyl methacrylate by emulsion polymerization. These particles have a low refractive index of 1.386. High particle surface charge densities were obtained by minimizing the polymer molecular weight. These colloids formed well-ordered crystalline colloidal arrays (CCAs), after dialysis and ion exchange, which Bragg diffract light at wavelengths from the near-IR down to 270 nm in the UV. The diffraction bandwidths in water are very narrow (
