Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
theconversation.com
Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
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Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#2I liked this bit:
> The technology could be used in the agricultural industry to help monitor and maintain food quality control, and in remote sensing techniques such as LIDAR – a technology that is helping to map natural and manmade environments.
"Please give us some of your advertising money Google."
I hope they get the money they're asking for. It sounds like a really interesting experiment.
Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#3Does the generated light preserve the incoming direction of the source IR? If not, then you'll still need some sort of lens to focus the IR onto the film, and then (if your eye is close to the film) another lens to let you focus on the film. So, nothing like the concept image of glasses enhancing the scenery.
Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#4Anyone know if the performance is good enough to bring it into scope of arms control laws?
As I understand it if you make (very) high performance night vision you may not be able to sell it to civilians under current regulations.
Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#5Anyone know if the performance is good enough to bring it into scope of arms control laws? As I understand it if you make (very) high performance night vision you may not be able to sell it to civilians under current regulations.
Arms control laws?
Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#6Anyone know if the performance is good enough to bring it into scope of arms control laws? As I understand it if you make (very) high performance night vision you may not be able to sell it to civilians under current regulations.
Arms control laws?
ITAR.
I think many people in the US (who can buy NV pretty easily) don't notice that export is not allowed without approval from the state department.
Export is regulated for sure, but I think there are also performance limits on what you are allowed to sell to non law enforcement / military.
Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#7> Commercial infrared cameras convert infrared light to an electric signal, which is then shown on a display screen. They require low temperatures, because of the low energy and frequency of infrared light. This makes conventional infrared detectors bulky and heavy – some security personnel have reported chronic neck injury due to regular use of night vision goggles.
This isn't how military etc NVGs work; they use optics, and don't have active cooling. Eg, a photocathode made with gallium arsenide.
Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#8Not a strictly new technology but an improvement on existing concepts. This is building an artificial non-linear optic using a metamaterial to make it more compact. It works by frequency shifting the incoming infrared into the visible light spectrum without otherwise altering it. Of course it's just a proof of concept metamaterial so there's a bunch of practical limitations that will need to be overcome with engineering before it's ready for prime time.
The actual publication is at https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/advanced-photoni...
Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#9> Commercial infrared cameras convert infrared light to an electric signal, which is then shown on a display screen. They require low temperatures, because of the low energy and frequency of infrared light. This makes conventional infrared detectors bulky and heavy – some security personnel have reported chronic neck injury due to regular use of night vision goggles. This isn't how military etc NVGs work; they use op…
This is very similar to current military optics. It just uses a GaAs meta-material surface instead of a GaAs microbolometer array. Fundamentally they are both semi-conductor microscopic antenna arrays. The abstract plays down current gen by choice of comparisons probably to drive funding interest, and of course the article does what science news articles do.
Re: Tiny crystal films could make night vision an everyday reality
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arms control laws?
ITAR. I think many people in the US (who can buy NV pretty easily) don't notice that export is not allowed without approval from the state department. Export is regulated for sure, but I think there are also performance limits on what you are allowed to sell to non law enforcement / military.
This is coming out of Australia so it wouldn't be ITAR, but they do have their own export restrictions on this sort of technology.