Biosilica slab photonic crystals as an alternative to cleanroom nanofabrication?

Photonics, the manipulation of light at nanoscale, is a key enabling technology with impact in health and energy applications, among others. In most cases photonics still relies on materials and fabrication methods inherited from other disciplines, usually requiring expensive, time-consuming and environmentally-unfriendly processes. Recent experiments demonstrated that advanced photonic materials, as complex as those known as 2.