We made photonic crystals composed of artificial opals infiltrated with ZnS semiconductor nanocrystals by using self-assembly and solvothermal methods. SEM images show that the silica spheres exhibit a well-ordered arrangement and the ZnS nanocrystals infiltrate within the opal templates by heterogeneous nucleation and growth processing, and the as-synthesized ZnS nanocrystals reveal a cubic phase from X-ray diffraction pattern. Furthermore, the optical properties of the infiltrated opals with different ZnS filling ratio are also studied by transmission spectroscopy, respectively. It is proposed that the position of the stop band can be easily designed by controlling the infiltration ratio of ZnS. These results demonstrate an easy-to-handle and efficient route to obtain high performance photonic crystal structures. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.