Theoretical study of the anchoring influence on plasmonic resonance tunability of metallic nano-particles embedded in a liquid crystal cell
Abstract
Liquid crystals (LCs) are an outstanding material as a surrounding environment for metallic nanoparticles, owing to their anisotropy. Indeed, by applying an external electric field, the environment of the particle can be modified, leading to a LSPR shift. Using LCs in conjunction with gold gratings or nano-particles, for example gold nanorods, gold nanodots and nanodisks, gold dimer, and nanohole arrays have been reported experimentally. Furthermore, some papers have reported numerical investigation of metallic arrays or particles covered by nematic LCs. But all of these works neglect the anchoring phenomenon at the interface of LC molecules and glass substrates, or consider that a weak anchoring condition is met. On the contrary, in this work, we theoretically study strong anchoring effects on the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) peak position of an ordered gold nanoparticles array deposited on a glass substrate. LSPR peaks are theoretically found by computing extinction spectra using the FDTD method.