Dr. Tony Huang, Assistant Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics, and colleagues, work in plasmonic devices that integrate the capability of localizing and guiding light in sub-wavelength metallic structures, driving photonics and electronics towards practical applications, has been published by Advanced Materials as a cover image as well as being highlighted on Nature Photonics and ACS Nanotation. Towards these ends, effective translation of plasmonic devices is based upon the requisite fruition of active switching and modulator components. As such, exciting work by Dr. Huang and colleagues has advanced this domain towards this goal by developing a novel photo-responsive liquid crystal/gold nanodisk hybrid as a light-driven plasmonic switch. The switches harnessed the advantages of liquid crystals due to their favorable biorefringence properties which (via photo-irradiation) were capable of modulating the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of the embedded array of gold nanodisks.

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**Text adapted from ACS Publications