Slashdot Mirror
Transparent Transistors?
ExRex writes "New Scientist has this article about a material developed at the Tokyo Institute of Technology which is not only both a semi-conductor and ferro-magnetic at room temperature, but is also transparent. It may lead to flat panels which contain both image processing circuitry and memory in the screen itself." They're thinking laptops, but I'm thinking heads-up displays.
Build a display into a set of contact lenses. Display the irises of the person whom you're pretending to be. Complete with whatever dynamic changes the scanner is looking for to tell a "real" iris from a photograph of one.
Or, on a less insidious level, for the fashion concious: contact lenses that can display funky dynamic patterns.
-- Alastair
Doesn't the image used for a HUD have to be effectively at infinity, and so needs to be reflected from the glass you are looking through?
Tom
I have discovered a wonderful
"Currently, transistors in laptop displays absorb a quarter of the brightness of the backlight. Transparent transistors could solve this."
Above quote copy-pasted from the New Scientist article referenced by /. - I claim score 3 informative too. No offence intended to onion2k, but this is getting silly.
BTW, If transistors soak up 25% of the light, just stick a few on your window, then the sun won't be so bright
If we could combine this technology with this technology, then we could reach a stage of rapid advancement in screen technology which could revolutionalise the way which computers and information are displayed.
... I wonder what happened to it.
I remember reading that scientists had also created an lcd technology which absorbs and reflects more background light, but I cannot find the article anywhere :-(
Pioneer also announced work in this area several years ago
If these mobile processors emit 25 watts of energy, and are designed for mobile units, why not put that to good use? At that wattage, you could get things to incandesce, or maybe more efficiently cause it to flouresce. Why not backlight your LCD with it?
You'd even still have your energy-saver if the backlight and processor "sleep" at the same time!
Imagine some glasses that would also act as a screen. Like in Terminator, where we could see through *its* eyes some Z80 asm listings while he was maiming Sarah Connor.
My point is that this will boost the wearable market in peculiar.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
The transistors in an average TFT screen soak up about 25% of the light emitted by the backlight. These new semiconductors, being transparent, eliminate that translucency, and thus make the screen 'brighter'.
Which would be nice right now coz the sun is far too flamin' bright.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Well, you'd have to have some sort of control mechanism, as expecting your "super-glasses" to respond to an inherent command structure like you want them too might be a bit too far out. So, a wire linked control could be possible.
However, I don't know if the miniture camera idea is possible with just one set of lenses (one lens per eye, that is)... wouldn't you still need more then one lens or a lens and mirror arrangement to do proper magnification? I don't know a lot about optics though... If it can be accomplished with only one lens per eye, then I'd like to see it do telescopic and microscopic magnification.
IR sight might be possible, but you would need a receptor to "catch" the IR, while the software and image translation could be built into the lenses, which are simultaneously used as the screen.
Recording would be much easier, IMAO, although depending on how much memory these hypothetical lenses can hold, you'd want some sort of backup storage. Obviously, you'd also want some way to transfer the data. An attachable wire to one of the earpieces, perhaps.
Just my 2 shekels.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
"I'm thinking heads-up displays."
I'm thinking glasses with built-in miniature cameras to enhance image quality of the world around us. Zooming, recording, IR vision, the possibilities are endless.
Or am I just daydreaming again?
Zenoran
-- In the Garden of Eden, God is giving Adam a geometry lesson:
"Two parallel lines intersect at infinity. It can't be proved but I've been there."
Umm, in a tft screen the transistor does not generate the light. When one transistor turns on, it supplies electricity to the crystal, allowing it to untwist which allows light (from a light source behind the thin film of transistors) to shine through. So the transistors only act as switches to "turn on" or untwist the liquid crystal. They are already partially transparent since the film they are on covers the entire screen. For colour screens, there are three transistors per pixel (R, G, B). Therefore, these transparent transistors will probably allow brigher screens, but that is about it.
Hence, you need a display, and some lensing, before dumping the image into a combiner in the main lens.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Neato high-tech X-ray specs just aren't the same thing when they're bulked up like night-vision goggles.
But then I thought...holographic optics. The right interference pattern on a thin film will do the job that a set of lenses would.
-- Alastair
There's a small problem with embedding the display elements in the lenses - you need to have optics to cause the light from the display to be less divergent than it would normally be. In other words, you have to make the display elements be optically furthur from the viewer's eye. I have severe myopia (-8 diopters in my good eye), but even I cannot focus closer than about 15 cm without discomfort. You have to make the display look like it's about 1m from the viewer. Hence, you need a display, and some lensing, before dumping the image into a combiner in the main lens.
Now, if they can do this, and make the combiner not have a large impact on the view when the display is not showing anything (so that I don't have to remove the display to see normally), and get a Bluetooth link so that I don't have to have a huge cable running down my neck....
www.eFax.com are spammers
There's some potential here, I think...
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Not sure about heads up displays, or for that matter head mounted. I want displays on(in?) any transparent surface that needs to show info. (think transparent tabletop screens, windows, etc)
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Jon - TheSpork
Perhaps the Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses from the Guide can now become a reality.
Psychos do not explode when the sunlight hits them, I don't care how fucked up they are.
Heck, do a few layers of these, and couldn't you build a whole PC (minus the hard drive, power supply, and ports) into a sheet of clear plexiglass? Add some touch sensors, some photoreceptors.. and you've got the holy grail of the computer artist.
Steve Jobs must be wetting his pants.
----- I don't believe in wisconsin.