J. Shan, W. Shi, L. Y. Liu, Y. R. Shen, and L. Xu

Accepted Tuesday Jun 19, 2012

Gold nanoparticles deposited on the windows of a liquid crystal (LC) cell were found to be able to reduce the surface anchoring energy of LC, and hence the threshold for its reorientation phase transition, by one to two orders of magnitude when a CW pump light was used to excite the local plasmon resonance of the nanoparticles. The effect was due to disorientation of LC molecules between nanoparticles by the plasmon-enhanced local field that softens the effective surface anchoring. Light-controlled variation of surface anchoring energy could provide new opportunities for optoelectronic applications of LC.

http://prl.aps.org/accepted/L/36073Y3dD3c18f30143e8f56bfbc9ad83be16f597?ajax=1&height=500&width=500

全文见：http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v109/i14/e147801