Low-Voltage Tuning in a Nanoparticle/Liquid Crystal Photonic Structure- September 2012
L Criante, F Scotognella – The Journal of Physical Chemistry
In this study we propose the fabrication and characterization of nanoparticle based multilayer photonic crystals infiltrated with a nematic liquid crystal. We show a very simple infiltration of the liquid crystal in the porous structure, controlled by monitoring the photonic band gap during the infiltration process. Tunability with electric field (by aligning the liquid crystal director) has been observed at very low applied voltage, with a blue shift of the photonic band gap of 8 nm at only 8 V. The presented results could be very interesting for realization of low cost and portable switching devices for high density integrated optics… The optical characterization has been performed by using a tungsten lamp and concave grating spectrometer, from StellarNet (spectral resolution 1.5 nm). Infiltration has been done with electronically controlled Teflon oven (CaLCTech).
