Objects visible through glare-free materials are clear, but traditional anti-glare films (right) blur the view.
Mu Wang et al/Nanjing University
Glare-free windows can be made from materials studded with billions of tiny metal patches. This leaves the one-way window matte – it looks opaque and reflects only 1% of the light from outside – but it is still transparent, so it doesn’t blur your view or significantly reduce the amount of light it lets in. You may be able to secure the privacy of your car or office without having to worry about it. They let them in.
Mu Wan Nanjing University in China and his colleagues have created a glass-like material with a matte finish similar to frosted glass, called transparent material surface (TMS). Unlike existing anti-glare coatings and films, objects can be viewed and photographed through TMS without blur.
Wang notes that matte and transparent are typically mutually exclusive properties. To accomplish both at the same time, he and his team coated the material with nanosized patches that scatter and reflect light in just the right way. They make these parts from reflective metals like gold and materials like silicon that conduct electricity poorly, which reduces the amount of light reflected. They then placed billions of them onto glass wafers.
They tested it by shining a light on it and found that a camera with a TMS wafer over the lens could reflect just 1.3% of the light while transmitting enough light to take clear photos. . The researchers also asked the AI to identify a tennis ball on the other side, combined with a camera connected to the AI that labels the object. The AI was successful when viewing the ball through TMS, but labeled the ball as “unidentified” when viewing through the blur created by traditional anti-glare film.
“The most exciting part of the experiment for us was the interesting moment when we saw the freshly prepared 4-inch sample with our own eyes for the first time without any special equipment. The material became transparent when light passed through it. It was difficult to imagine that there would be no distortion in the image, but it would look dull when reflecting light,” says Wang.
Simon Horsley Researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK say the material is suitable for making “very large windows” and could help reduce light pollution. Reflections are a major source of light pollution, and this material helps minimize light pollution by reflecting soft, diffused light instead of annoying bright glare.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
