Switch Glasses: High-Tech Smart-Glass
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| Switch Glasses |
Every one of us is once a while has a concern regarding our privacy.
Right! What to do then?
The answer to your question is Switch-Glasses.
What is this?
From the above video: As we can observe that initially smart glass piece of the film is clear however with just the touch of a button it goes to being opaque.
With another touch, it goes back to being clear and back to forth.
How does it work?
It all works because of polymer dispersed liquid crystals.
The film is made up of a plastic polymer with very tiny holes about point 2.3 to 3 microns.
A micron is just one-millionth of a meter
These tiny holes are filled with liquid crystals.
They can imagine it as like Swiss cheese and it's sandwiched in between two conductive layers.
Thus, when there's no current running through them the liquid crystals are randomly oriented inside of the holes.
They scatter light as it passes through, thus making it look opaque
However, when occurrence runs through it all the liquid crystals align in the same direction and this allows light to pass through unscattered and these liquid crystals are special.
As the name sort, it implies,
Liquid Crystals have some Properties of Liquids and some Properties of Crystals
They're fluid and have the ability to move and make droplets like a liquid-wood but they have some properties of being crystal-like being able to be arranged in a certain orientation.
These liquid crystals are also anisotropic i.e., Properties change with orientation
It's another thing that makes it more like a crystal,
Its index of refraction or how fast light travels through it
What a Refraction does?
Example: If you put a pencil and a glass in water the pencil looks sort of broken or bent.
This happens as light travels faster through the air than it does water
Likewise, the light wave hits that water, and the wave width slows down thus causes light to bend and look kind of distorted.
The same thing is happening with the liquid crystals when the liquid crystal is in a random orientation, it's an index of refraction that does not match the polymer and this causes it to bend light.
As we know, all the molecules have different random orientations
Causing light to be bent and scattered in all different directions, making it opaque.
When the liquid crystals are lined up with the electric current their index of refraction in that orientation matches the polymer causing the light to go straight beat, uninterrupted.
In addition, the liquid crystals having to be made with matching indexes of refraction to the polymer
Keeping in mind that the polymer should
Be rigid enough to align in one direction but still fluid enough to move around
Applications:
- The biggest use is for privacy. Now you can have a private meeting just by clicking a button.
- Boeing has also added smart glass to their 787 Dreamliner Airplanes to replace:
- Typical Sun Shade and allow us to control the level of light.
Other:
- Finally, Dynamic-glass can be used to reduce cooling costs as it reduces the amount of sunlight coming into the building.
- Can save up to 20% on electrical cost.
- Benefitting by blocking around 99% of UV rays which somehow degrade carpet and furniture.
At last,
Who knows maybe in the future majority of glasses may be Switch-Glasses
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