OREANDA-NEWS. Australian and European scientists have developed a revolutionary technology that allows you to see clearly in the dark through ultra-thin film that can be applied to the surface of ordinary glasses. A descriptive article published in Advanced Photonics.

Researchers at the Australian National University, along with colleagues from Italy, Great Britain, Germany, France and Bulgaria, have created a thin film based on nanometer-sized crystals that can turn infrared light invisible to the human eye into a visible image.

“We made the invisible visible,” the first author of the article, Dr. Rocio Camacho Morales, quoted in a university press release. “A thin film of nanocrystals hundreds of times thinner than a human hair can be applied directly to glasses, and it acts as a filter that allows you to see in the dark. "

The new technology for controlling light uses the properties of the metasurface of ultra-thin films, in which its optical properties vary at each individual point.

"For the first time in the world, infrared light has been successfully converted into visible images on an ultrathin screen. This is truly an exciting development and we are confident that it will change night vision technology forever," said study leader Dragomir Neshev, professor of physics at the Australian National University and Director of the Center of Excellence in Meta-Optical Transformational Systems, Australian Research Council.

According to the developers, the new technology is extremely light, cheap and easy to mass produce, making it a very promising alternative to night vision devices.