Journal Article

Actively addressed single pixel full-colour plasmonic display

Frank, Russell, Wu, Shin-Tson, Franklin, Daniel, Chanda, Debashis

2017

Overview

Dynamic, colour-changing surfaces have many applications including displays, wearables and active camouflage. Plasmonic nanostructures can fill this role by having the advantages of ultra-small pixels, high reflectivity and post-fabrication tuning through control of the surrounding media. However, previous reports of post-fabrication tuning have yet to cover a full red-green-blue (RGB) colour basis set with a single nanostructure of singular dimensions. Here, we report a method which greatly advances this tuning and demonstrates a liquid crystal-plasmonic system that covers the full RGB colour basis set, only as a function of voltage. This is accomplished through a surface morphology-induced, polarization-dependent plasmonic resonance and a combination of bulk and surface liquid crystal effects that manifest at different voltages. We further demonstrate the system’s compatibility with existing LCD technology by integrating it with a commercially available thin-film-transistor array. The imprinted surface interfaces readily with computers to display images as well as video. Tuning of plasmonic nanostructures has yet to cover a full colour basis set with a single nanostructure. Franklin et al . demonstrate a liquid crystal-plasmonic system that covers the full red-green-blue colour basis set as a function of voltage and which can be actively addressed with thin-film-transistor technology.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 142/126 / 639/624/1075/146 / 639/624/399/919 / 639/624/400/1021 / Fabrication / Humanities and Social Sciences / Light / Morphology / multidisciplinary / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Thin films / Transistors