Plasmonic Heavily-Doped Semiconductor Nanocrystal Dielectrics: Making Static Photonic Crystals Dynamic

In this work we introduce photonic devices with dynamically modifiable transmission properties through the combination of the transfer matrix method, the Drude model, and the Maxwell-Garnett effective medium approximation. Heavily doped semiconductor nanocrystal layers with tunable plasmonic near-infrared (NIR) properties are embedded as dielectrics into the otherwise invariable one-dimensional photonic crystals. A selective tuning of the localized surface plasmon resonance in the NIR modifies the refractive index contrast in the photonic structure, consequently affecting the intensity and position of the photonic band in the visible spectral range. The resulting possibility to dynamically modify the transmission properties in the visible and NIR highlights their application for sensing, tunable light filtering, or electrochromic devices.