Optical Control of Surface Anchoring and Reorientation of Liquid Crystals via a Plasmon-Enhanced Local Field

J. Shan, W. Shi, L. Y. Liu, Y. R. Shen, and L. Xu

Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 147801 – Published 2 October 2012

Abstract

Gold nanoparticles deposited on the windows of a liquid crystal (LC) cell were found to be able to reduce the surface anchoring energy of the LC, and hence the threshold for its reorientation phase transition, by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude when a cw pump light was used to excite the local plasmon resonance of the nanoparticles. The effect was due to the disorientation of LC molecules between nanoparticles by the plasmon-enhanced local field that softens the effective surface anchoring. A light-controlled variation of surface anchoring energy could provide new opportunities for optoelectronic applications of a LC.

Received 18 March 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.147801

Authors & Affiliations

J. Shan¹, W. Shi¹, L. Y. Liu¹, Y. R. Shen^2,3, and L. Xu^1,2,*

¹Key Lab for Micro and Nanophotonic Structures (Ministry of Education), Department of Optical Science and Engineering, School of Information Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
²Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
³Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94210, USA

^*leixu@fudan.ac.cn

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Vol. 109, Iss. 14 — 5 October 2012

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