Plasmonic Resonance Tunability and Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Gain of Metallic Nanoparticles Embedded in a Liquid Crystal Cell

The localized surface plasmon resonance positions and the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) gain (G(sERs)) of an ordered array of gold nanocylinders with elliptic basis, embedded in a nematic liquid crystal (LC) media, are investigated using the finite-difference time-domain method. Structures are designed so that two resonances occur. The influence of the anchoring effects between nematic LC molecules and glass substrate on the shift of the double-resonance wavelengths is taken into account, and results are compared with the case of a perfect alignment of the LC molecules and an isotropic material.