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Science Quickly

Moths Inspire Better Smartphone Screens

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2017

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Researchers designed an antireflective coating for smartphone screens, with inspiration from the bumpy eyes of moths. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

0:22.7

.jp.j. That's y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.jp. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.6

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:39.0

One of the things that makes your smartphone so smart is that if you pull it out in the sun,

0:43.5

it senses that and dials up the screen brightness to compensate.

0:46.9

But it's not a perfect solution.

0:48.8

First of all, it's still not bright enough.

0:51.7

You know, remember how respectable the sunlight is.

0:56.4

Shin San Wu, a physicist at the University of Central Florida. The other problem, he says of the

1:01.6

brightened screen, is that it kills the battery. So Wu and colleagues have fabricated a battery

1:06.6

sparing alternative, an anti-reflective screen coding based on the eyes of moths.

1:11.6

Nature is so rich. We can learn a lot from nature.

1:16.6

The thing Wu and others have learned about moth eyes is that they're bumpy, studied with tiny projections.

1:22.6

And that uneven surface reduces the reflection of light off their eyes, thought to help the bugs evade

1:27.7

predators and see better in low light. So, Wuminous team built a similar surface with tiny dimples

1:33.6

to cut down on glare. He says the dimpled coating could boost the readability of a screen

1:38.1

by five to ten times compared to a normal smartphone screen. The details are in the journal Optica.

1:44.6

The tech hasn't been commercialized yet, and that could take a few years,

1:48.7

which gives researchers time to take advantage of another property of these surfaces.

...

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