Soft matter design principles for inorganic photonic nanoarchitectures in photovoltaics, colorimetric sensing and self-cleaning antireflective coatings

The self-assembly of soft matter, such as block copolymers or colloids, allows fine tuning of structure formation on the 10 - 500 nm length scale and therefore enables the design of materials with tunable optical response. We present strategies on how to exploit these formation principles to assemble inorganic nanoarchitectures with distinct optical properties and point out promising applications in photovoltaics, colorimetric sensing and self-cleaning antireflective coatings.