Rapid fabrication of large area binary polystyrene colloidal crystals

•The large area monolayer PS colloidal crystals are prepared by the simple interface assembled approach.•Spin-coating method provides an effective one for fabricating different binary colloidal crystals.•Some new and complicated binary colloidal structures are fabricated via controlling the size ratio and the spin speeds.

Binary colloidal crystals (BCCs) possess great potentials in tuning material and optical properties. In this paper, the combination of interface transferred method and spin-coating method is used to fabricate BCCs with different patterns via controlling the size ratio of small (S) to large (L) colloidal spheres and the spin speeds. It is found that BCCs formed LS2, LS4 and LS6 by changing the size ratio. In addition, there are some new and complicated structures, such as LS12, Janus arrays, formed at the low spin speed. This simple assembly method has potential to allow for the creation of optical metmaterials and the plasmonic structures with chiral optical properties.