MIT researchers create transparent projection screen

MIT researchers create transparent projection screen

According to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a transparent projection screen which has the capability to turn any window into a display for moving images.

For creating the transparent projection screen, which can be stuck on to any window, the researchers have embedded tiny silver-based nanoparticles into a transparent polymer sheet.  The nanoparticles are barely 62 nanometers wide in diameter; and the polymer sheet in which they are embedded is two-hundredths of an inch in thickness.

Though nanoparticles create transparency because they are not visible to the human eye, they show up images by reflecting blue light into a liquid polymer.  With the transparent screen developed by the MIT researchers requiring just a few thousandths of a gram of nanoparticles per square centimetre of screen, the researchers claim that the technology is also reasonably cheap.

Noting that the transparent projection screen created by them is simpler to make than similar screens currently available on the market, the MIT researchers said that the potential use of the stick-on screens include hosting of advertisements on shop windows or for office presentations.

Describing the design of the transparent projection screen in the journal, MIT researcher Chia Wei Hsu and colleagues said: "This approach has attractive features including simplicity, wide viewing angle, scalability to large sizes and low cost."