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Optical switching of nematic liquid crystal film arising from induced electric field of localized surface plasmon resonance

We have developed an all-optical method to control the in- and out-of-plane spatial orientation of nematic liquid crystal (NLC) molecules by leveraging the highly localized electric fields produced in the near-field regime of gold nanoparticle (AuNP) layers. A 1-2 micron thick NLC film is deposited on a close-packed drop-cast AuNP layer, excited with tunable optical sources and the transmission of white light through it analyzed using polarization optics as a function of incident light wavelength, excitation power and sample temperature. Our findings, supported by simulations using discrete-dipole approximations, establish the optical switching effect to be repeatable, reversible, spectrally-selective, operational over a broad temperature range, including room temperature, and requiring very small on-resonance excitation intensity (0.3 W/cm2). For the case of the in-plane switching we have additionally demonstrated that controlling the incident excitation polarization can continuously vary the alignment of the NLC molecules, allowing for grayscale transmission.