Plasmonic Color Switching by a Combination Device with Nematic Liquid Crystals and a Silver Nanocube Monolayer

Ayana Mizuno; Yosei Shibata; Hideo Fujikake; Atsushi Ono

doi:10.1021/acsomega.3c05707

Plasmonic Color Switching by a Combination Device with Nematic Liquid Crystals and a Silver Nanocube Monolayer

ACS Omega. 2023 Oct 28;8(44):41579-41585. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c05707. eCollection 2023 Nov 7.

Authors

Ayana Mizuno¹, Yosei Shibata², Hideo Fujikake², Atsushi Ono^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Graduate School of Science and Technology, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu 432-8561, Japan.
² Department of Electronic Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.
³ Research Institute of Electronics, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu 432-8011, Japan.

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrated electrical plasmonic color modulation by combining a nematic-phase liquid crystal (LC) layer and a silver nanocube (AgNC) monolayer. The color modulation LC/AgNC device was fabricated by filling LCs with negative dielectric anisotropy onto a densely assembled AgNC monolayer. The transmitted light color through the LC/AgNC device was modulated between green and magenta by applying voltages of 0-15 V. The peaks and dips in the transmission spectrum of the LC/AgNC device at wavelengths of 500-600 nm were switched with voltage. The switching effect of light transmission in the green region was achieved by overlapping the plasmon resonance of the AgNC monolayer and multiple transmittance peaks caused by the birefringence of the LC layer. In addition, the color inversion appeared at cross-Nicole and parallel-Nicole because the LC layer functioned like a half-wave plate due to birefringence. The electrical modulation of the plasmonic color with LCs has a high implementation capability in microdevices and is anticipated to be applied in display devices or color filters.