Electric field induced structural colour tuning of a silver/titanium dioxide nanoparticle one-dimensional photonic crystal

An electric field is employed for the active tuning of the structural colour in photonic crystals, which acts as an effective external stimulus with an impact on light transmission manipulation. In this work, we demonstrate structural colour in a photonic crystal device comprised of alternating layers of silver nanoparticles and titanium dioxide nanoparticles, exhibiting spectral shifts of around 10 nm for an applied voltage of only 10 V. The accumulation of charge at the metal/dielectric interface with an applied electric field leads to an effective increase of the charges contributing to the plasma frequency in silver. This initiates a blue shift of the silver plasmon band with a simultaneous blue shift of the photonic band gap as a result of the change in the silver dielectric function (i.e. decrease of the effective refractive index). These results are the first demonstration of active colour tuning in silver/titanium dioxide nanoparticle-based photonic crystals and open the route to metal/dielectric-based photonic crystals as electro-optic switches.