Polarization-independent actively tunable colour generation on imprinted plasmonic surfaces

Abstract

Structural colour arising from nanostructured metallic surfaces offers many benefits compared to conventional pigmentation based display technologies, such as increased resolution and scalability of their optical response with structure dimensions. However, once these structures are fabricated their optical characteristics remain static, limiting their potential application. Here, by using a specially designed nanostructured plasmonic surface in conjunction with high birefringence liquid crystals, we demonstrate a tunable polarization-independent reflective surface where the colour of the surface is changed as a function of applied voltage. A large range of colour tunability is achieved over previous reports by utilizing an engineered surface which allows full liquid crystal reorientation while maximizing the overlap between plasmonic fields and liquid crystal. In combination with imprinted structures of varying periods, a full range of colours spanning the entire visible spectrum is achieved, paving the way towards dynamic pixels for reflective displays.

Impact of titanium dioxide nanoparticles on purification and contamination of nematic liquid crystals

“…The area of LCs for non-display applications is also rapidly growing. The application of LCs includes metamaterials [4], photonic crystals [5], plasmonic structures [6], THz devices [7], sensors [8], diffractive optics [9], adaptive lens technologies [10] and vision correction [11], as well as tunable filters [12] and dispersion for imaging [13]. In addition, nanoparticles can induce other new functions in liquid crystals, including improved response time [14–15], surface plasmon resonance [16], and improvements in alignment [17].…”

Graphene-plasmon polaritons: From fundamental properties to potential applications

“…Tunable plasmonic materials are essential in various areas of photonics, with applications ranging from perfect absorbers, high-technology frequency modulators and radiators to highly efficient chemical and biochemical sensing [24,32,[41][42][43][97][98][99][100][101][102][103]. Graphene supports plasmons that are tunable, providing a novel platform for tunable devices.…”

Polarization switchable two-color plasmonic nano-pixels for creating optical surfaces encoded with dual information states

“…Furthermore, plasmonic filters can perform over length scales of >100 nm, making them ideal for miniaturized, compact optical imaging solutions where space is at a premium. Effective color filtering has been demonstrated using both positive nanostructures [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and 'negative' nanostructures (apertures through a metallic thinfilm). [13][14] These filtering solutions have thus far been shown applicable to color separation in CMOS image sensors, 15,16 to full-color image reproduction ('printing') with pixel sizes beyond the diffraction limit 3,4,17 , and to ultra-high resolution optical data storage.…”