MIT engineers have developed an incredibly thin and flexible material that could lead to lightweight, wearable night-vision glasses—and much more.
The breakthrough comes from a new way of growing and peeling off extremely thin “skins” of electronic materials, opening the door to flexible electronics, heat-sensing patches, and tiny infrared cameras.
To show how their new method works, the team created the thinnest-ever sheet of a heat-sensitive material called pyroelectric film.
It’s only 10 nanometers thick—about 10,000 times thinner than a sheet of paper.
This material can detect small changes in heat and radiation, especially in the far-infrared range, which is useful for night vision.
Unlike current night-vision devices, which need heavy cooling systems to work well, this new film works at room temperature.
That means it could be used in night-vision glasses that are lighter, cheaper, and more comfortable to wear. The team says this could help people see better in the dark or in foggy weather, which would be especially useful for drivers, pilots, or even autonomous vehicles.
The key to this discovery lies in how the material is made. The researchers used a special technique called remote epitaxy to grow the thin film.
Normally, a tiny layer of graphene helps peel the film off its base, but in this case, they found that a material containing lead didn’t need that layer.
Lead atoms in the material naturally prevent it from sticking tightly, allowing the film to be peeled off smoothly—just like peeling tape from glass.
Once they had their thin film, the scientists placed it on a chip and created a tiny array of heat-sensing pixels.
They tested the chip by exposing it to slight temperature changes and found that it could detect even the smallest shifts. This makes the technology just as sensitive as today’s best night-vision gear, but without the need for expensive cooling.
The film is also sensitive to a broader range of infrared light than current devices. This could make it useful in many areas—like tracking environmental pollution, detecting gas leaks, or monitoring overheating in electronics.
The research team believes their peeling method could be used with other materials in the future, even those that don’t contain lead. They’re now working on turning the heat-sensing film into a complete night-vision system.
With continued development, this ultrathin film could change the way we build electronic sensors and make high-tech vision tools lighter, cheaper, and more widely available.
Source: MIT.
