Active Liquid Crystal Tuning of Plasmonic Enhanced Light Emission from Colloidal Quantum Dots

A system comprising an aluminum nanoantenna array on top of a luminescent colloidal quantum dot waveguide and covered by a thermotropic liquid crystal (LC) is introduced. By heating the LC above its critical temperature, we demonstrate that the concomitant refractive index change modifies the hybrid plasmonic–photonic resonances in the system. This enables active control of the spectrum and directionality of the narrow-band (~ 6 nm) enhancement of quantum dot photoluminescence by the metallic nanoantennas.