The fabrication of 2D and 3D photonic crystal arrays towards high performance recognition of metal ions and biomolecules

Methods allowing photonic crystals to be applied to metal-ion recognition and biological detection in a controllable fashion are potentially important for analytical chemistry. Herein, 2D photonic crystal films and 3D photonic crystal supraballs were respectively prepared to serve as the inkjet printing response and single loaded coordination response, for detecting metal ions. Subsequently, we described a cell photonic crystal array (CPA) chip, coupling functionalized 3D photonic crystal supraballs with a 96-well plate, establishing a testing platform. By using a microplate reader, multiple signals could be extracted at once, which simplifies the testing process and saves the detection time. This simple and convenient method is expected to be applied to qualitative and quantitative tests of various heavy metal ions and biomolecules, such as BSA, a kind of biological macromolecule.