Plasmochromic Nanocavity Dynamic Light Color Switching

Static plasmonic metal–insulator–nanohole (MIN) cavities have been shown to create high chromaticity spectral colors for display applications. While on–off switching of said devices has been demonstrated, introducing active control over the spectral color of a single cavity is an ongoing challenge. Electrochromic oxides such as tungsten oxide (WO3) offer the possibility to tune their refractive index (2.1–1.8) and extinction (0–0.5) upon ion insertion, allowing active control over resonance conditions for MIN based devices. In combination with the dynamic change in the WO3 layer, the utilization of a plasmonic superstructure allows creation of well-defined spectral reflection of the nanocavity. Here, we employ inorganic, electrochromic WO3 as the tunable dielectric in a MIN nanocavity, resulting in a theoretically achievable resonance wavelength modulation from 601 to 505 nm, while maintaining 35% of reflectance intensity. Experimental values for the spectral modulation result in a 64 nm shift of peak wavelength with high reproducibility and fast switching speed. Remarkably, the introduced device shows electrochemical stability over 100 switching cycles while most of the intercalated charge can be regained (91.1%), leading to low power consumption (5.6 mW/cm–2).