Controlled self-assembly of plasmon-based photonic nanocrystals for high performance photonic technologies

•The self-assembled plasmonic nano-enabled photonic crystals (PCs) have been studied as promising platforms to develop next-generation photonic and opto-electronic devices.•In this review, we attempt to describe the fundamentals of self-assembled colloidal plasmonic nanostructures and various applications of such devices.•Different important aspects, such as interaction between metal NPs (MNPs) and non-metal 3-D crystals, effect of NPs on the spectral properties of materials, the mechanism of plasmonic based PCs, and related challenges and their possible solutions have been demonstrated crucially.•The advancements in the self-assembly based plasmonic PCs and their applications are discussed carefully.•We believe that nano-enabled self-assembled plasmonic crystals are better candidates of nanostructures to advance photonic technologies with reduced formfactor and high performance.