Currently, most transparent displays control organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) with electronics integrated directly into the display. While that solution certainly works it’s extremely difficult to manufacture, creates exorbitantly expensive systems and limits the transparency of the display.
To design their novel display technology, MIT Professor Marin Soljačić and his group at the Research Laboratory of Electronics embedded commercially available nanoparticles in glass. With their glass chock full of 60 nanometer long silver particulate, each particle was tuned to scatter a precise wavelength in the blue spectrum of light and project it onto a display.
If full color transparent displays could be made on the cheap then aerospace, automotive, eyewear and a plethora of other industries could begin to develop novel heads up displays that broadcast interactive information onto any transparent surface. Whether that’s a good thing or not, though, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Image and Video Courtesy of MIT