This seminar is hosted by Prof. Guoqiang Li, and Prof. David Stroud -
A promising approach of designing mesostructured materials with novel physical behavior is to combine unique optical and electronic properites of solid nanoparticles with long-range ordering and facile switching of soft matter. This lecture will describe how we practically realize molecular-colloidal organic-inorganic composites formed by dispersions of anisotropic nanoparticles in liquid crystals, demonstrating novel states of soft matter with both polar and nonpolar ordering of the colloidal constituents. This allows for engineering switchable plasmonic polarizers and color filters, in which the use of metal nanoparticles instead of dichroic dyes enables spontaneous surface-anchoring-mediated alignment of specially functionalized anisotropic metal nanoparticles and its control by low-voltage fields, as well as the use of corresponding elastic colloidal interactions and self-assembly in defining tunable properties of the ensuing organic-inorganic nanostructured composites. This enables engineering of electro-optic devices, such as a new breed of color filters and plasmonic polarizers.
