Within a few decades movie-goers may be able to watch their favorite flicks in 3-D without the need for glasses, a new study says.
University of Arizona optical sciences professor Nasser Peyghambarian and his colleagues have created what may be the first rewritable 3-D display surface, one in which an image can be replaced with another within a few minutes.
Peyghambarian's team is working to get the time needed to rewrite the surface down to a fraction of a second.
"The ultimate goal would be some sort of 3-D video that doesn't require eyeglasses to view," Peyghambarian said.
The study appears tomorrow in the journal Nature.
Big Advance
Key to this chameleon-like responsiveness is a specially crafted polymer with a refractive index—a measure of how much the speed of light is reduced—that can be changed by an electrical charge.
Through this charge the material's surface assumes the likeness of the image, which then can be illuminated by a set of small lasers underneath the polymer, according to Joseph Perry, a Georgia Institute of Technology chemistry professor who wrote a commentary about the work in Nature.
"We've been able to record really good holograms, but the problem is we just can't update them. That's what the big advance is here," Perry said.
Objects in a hologram jump out at the viewer in a way they wouldn't with regular photographs, thanks to how the image incorporates multiple views of its subject.
"When you look at a glass of water from different angles, those are called different perspectives," lead author Peyghambarian explained. A hologram can fold these perspectives onto a flat display surface.
Of course, hologram surfaces are nothing new—your credit card may even have a holographic stamp.
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