Controlling light using dynamic plasmonic pixels

With the end of Moore’s law, information needs to move from electron- to photon-based systems, if computational processing power is going to continue to increase. To enable this paradigm shift, optical elements are needed to dynamically control the propagation of light. Here we demonstrate the spatial, spectral and temporal control of light using electric field aligned plasmonic nanorods. We show these suspensions are color tunable from visible to infrared wavelengths, with microsecond switching times, and can be spatially tuned using lithographically defined electrodes. These suspensions may lead to novel dynamic plasmonic pixel devices for optical display, filter and spatial light modulators applications.