Advances in the construction of photonic structures with dual stopbands and beyond

Photonic structures have wide applications in a variety of fields. Self-assembly of building blocks, including block copolymers, homopolymers, liquid crystals, and colloidal particles, has been the most widely used process to construct photonic structures due to their low-cost and wide accessibility to most ordinary laboratories. In recent years, photonic structures with more than a single stopband have attracted considerable attention due to the demand for the integration of different photonic structures for biomimetics and miniaturized devices, despite the vast majority of research being focused on single stopband photonic structures. However, a review that systematically covers the progress in the development of photonic structures with multiple stopbands is yet to be summarized. In light of this, we present this review regarding the advances of photonic structures with more than a single stopband. We present our discussions from two aspects: multiple stopband bulk photonic structures and microobjects. This review is expected to help researchers to develop new photonic structures with multiple stopbands and address the challenges in designing new functional materials to meet the demands for anticounterfeiting, camouflage, etc.