Infiltration of E7 Liquid Crystal in a Nanoparticle-Based Multilayer Photonic Crystal: Fabrication and Electro-optical Characterization

In this study, we propose the fabrication and the electro-optical characterization of nanoparticle-based multilayer photonic crystals infiltrated with a nematic liquid crystal. Two methods of the photonics band gap tunability have been proposed. In the first, we have observed an aligning of the liquid crystal director along the external electric field vector at very low applied voltage, with a blue shift of the photonic band gap of 8nm at only 8Vrms. In the second, we put forward the possibility of tuning the photonic band gap of the porous multilayer just by infiltration of appropriate liquid crystals, in accordance with results carried out by a custom simulation software. The presented device could be very interesting for applications where high sensitivity sensor and selective color tunability is needed with the use of cheap and low-voltage power supplies