Electrically switchable structural colors based on liquid-crystal-overlaid aluminum anisotropic nanoaperture arrays

Ke Li (1, 2) , Jiawei Wang (1) , Wengfeng Cai (1) , Huilin He (1) , Jianxun Liu (1) , Zhen Yin (1) , Dan Luo (1) , Quanquan Mu (3) , Davy Gérard (2) , Yan Jun Liu (1)

1 SUSTech - Southern University of Science and Technology
2 L2n - Lumière, nanomatériaux et nanotechnologies
3 CAS - Chinese Academy of Sciences [Changchun Branch]

Actively tunable or reconfigurable structural colors are highly promising in future development for high resolution imaging and displaying applications. To this end, we demonstrate switchable structural colors covering the entire visible range by integrating aluminum nanoaperture arrays with nematic liquid crystals. The geometrically anisotropic design of the nanoapertures provides strong polarization-dependent coloration. By overlaying a nematic liquid crystal layer, we further demonstrate switchable ability of the structural colors by either changing the polarization of the incident light or applying an external voltage. The switchable structural colors have a fast response time of 28 ms at a driving voltage of 6.5 V. Furthermore, colorful patterns are demonstrated by coding the colors with various dimensions of nanoaperture arrays with dual switching modes. Our proposed technique in this work provides a dual-mode switchable structural colors, which is highly promising for polarimetric displays, imaging sensors, and visual cryptography.

Domaines: Matière Condensée [cond-mat]; Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique; Optique [physics.optics]

Ke Li, Jiawei Wang, Wengfeng Cai, Huilin He, Jianxun Liu, et al.. Electrically switchable structural colors based on liquid-crystal-overlaid aluminum anisotropic nanoaperture arrays. Optics Express, 2022, 30 (18), pp.31913-31924. ⟨10.1364/oe.461887⟩. ⟨hal-03759638⟩