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Science

Gold Nano-Coating Works Like an Anti-Fog Heating Element For Glasses (newatlas.com) 35

Posted by BeauHD from the what-won't-gold-solve dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: While anti-fog sprays work to a certain extent, warming a glass surface is a better way of keeping it fog-free. A new coating material is designed to do so, and it utilizes light-absorbing gold nanoparticles instead of electricity. Most of the anti-fog sprays used on things like eyeglasses incorporate hydrophilic (water-attracting) molecules. These draw in and evenly dispense condensation, making it easier to see through. By contrast, your car's rear window uses integrated elements to heat the glass, keeping condensation from forming in the first place.

Developed by a team at the ETH Zurich research institute, the new coating likewise uses heat -- but it doesn't require electricity. Instead, it uses a layer of clustered gold nanoparticles, sandwiched between two ultra-thin layers of titanium oxide -- the whole coating is just 10 nanometers thick, which is about one twelfth the thickness of a sheet of gold leaf. The gold nanoparticles absorb much of the infrared spectrum of incoming sunlight, causing the coating to become up to 8 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the ambient temperature. That said, the nanoparticles absorb very little visible light, allowing the coating to stay transparent. The refractive properties of the titanium oxide boost the efficiency of the heating effect. Additionally, the outer layer helps protect the gold from wear and tear. And as an added bonus, because the gold layer is electrically conductive, a power source such as a battery could be used to heat the coating when direct sunlight isn't an option. The study has been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
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Gold Nano-Coating Works Like an Anti-Fog Heating Element For Glasses More

Gold Nano-Coating Works Like an Anti-Fog Heating Element For Glasses

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  • Only 52,000 tons left to mine lads, and approximately 152 tons a year being nonchalantly fuked into the bin from people getting rid of their old smartphones. Someone's really gotta haul back a golden asteroid in the coming years if people continue wanting short lived consumer electronics made with gold

  • Already a solved problem? (Score:3)

    by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @08:33AM (#63126992) Journal

    Heated wire defrost on windshields has been a thing for a while now, though only an option on a select few vehicles. It uses the same manufacturing processes as the rear defog heat tracing but much finer wires which are optically almost invisible.

    Not clear what advantage this coating really has; unless it's really easy and cheap to apply it seems like it's already obsolete?
    =Smidge=

    • How does electric heating elements work for glasses? Maybe if you don't mind carrying a battery pack in your pocket, and have wires running from there to your glasses.

      And for car windows, if it were a "solved" problem, all (or nearly all) car windows would have electric heated defogging by now. Rear electric defoggers are very common, but they require visible lines across the surface. If a solution is too expensive to become widely available, then it's not really "solved."

      • > Maybe if you don't mind carrying a battery pack in your pocket

        Could probably integrate a lithium battery into the frames. Since the claim is you can use electricity to provide additional heat, one can hope the inventors making that claim have put some thought into that.

        > If a solution is too expensive to become widely available, then it's not really "solved."

        It takes time for tech to become more prevalent. You know what's also a solved problem? Camera-based side "mirrors." Why don't all cars have t

        • Has anybody ever actually integrated lithium batteries into glasses frames to heat the lenses? That's an idea, but that's not yet a "solved" problem. Would such batteries be able to store enough power to do that job? Would they be unsightly? These are questions no one has yet answered.

          Camera-based car "mirrors" is not a problem, it's a technology. What problem do these cameras solve, exactly? Whatever that problem is (dealing with blind spots?), if it's not cheap enough to rival mirrors in cost, it's not re

    • Isn't the difference that this coating doesn't need electricity, but heats up via IR? Glasses with batteries would be bulky.

      • Well yes but then it won't help you in the dark or in, say, scuba masks. (The latter never worked with electricity obviously, but it was the first application that came to mind before I saw the IR requirement)

    • Re:Already a solved problem? (Score:5, Informative)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @09:15AM (#63127128)
      Article on a new technology for glasses and goggles. Smidge: "tHiS Is dUmB wE aLReAdy hAvE WiNDsHiEld dEfrOsTerS!!!"

      I realize everyone on here wants to shit on anything and everything new, but at least put in the effort to read the god damn summary first.

      • > I realize everyone on here wants to shit on anything and everything new

        Or maybe enthusiasm needs to be weighs against reality. How many self-filling water bottles, nuclear diamond batteries, solar frikkin' roadways, and ceiling-mounted lasers charging your cell phone scams are we to suffer just because we don't want to be perceived as "shitting on anything and everything new?"

        Just because it's new doesn't mean it's not shit. A fresh turd is still a turd, so maybe a spoonful of criticism and skepticism

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )

          I'm just posing a challenge if this really solves a problem and if this solution is actually better than other, existing approaches to solving similar problems.

          No, you either didn't read the summary at all, or were so desperate to find a flaw you created a straw man to try to take it down.

    • It's probably a complement to existing technology as the combination of both will use less electricity. The new coating do not need electricity, it needs sun - the "free but not available at night or under really heavy fog" resource.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rhipf ( 525263 )

      Almost invisible wires sitting in a windshield ~1m away from you is a lot different than those same wires sitting a few millimetres from your eyes. Even fine dust that I would never see on a windshield bugs @#$%^ out of me when it is sitting on my glasses.

  • I want (Score:3)

    by registrations_suck ( 1075251 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @08:36AM (#63127010)

    I want this immediately for my motorcycle visor.

    • I've got pinlock for my motorcycle visor, and it works great. For those not in the know, it's a plastic sheet that you stick on the visor inside your helmet. It's lined with silicon channels, so there's trapped air and that's an insulator, so it doesn't fog.

      Works great except when you wear glasses, because then these still fog up.. so I want this gold nano-coating on my glasses.

      • I have it too. Doesn't prevent fogging up worth a shit.

        • Really? What I found out, is that there are different levels of pinlock. Sales people don't tell you that, perhaps even they don't know. There's 30, 70 and 120. I unknowingly bought a 70 for some reason. Perhaps you have a 30?

          • I've got a Schuberth helmet, and it comes with the Pinlock anti-fog layer insert (120, I think). To my amazement, it works perfectly, Except, as you note, my glasses fog up instead. So, anti-fog as a coating for my glasses is something I'd definitely be interested in.

            • I also had a Schubert helmet (C3 Pro). I have had no luck with pin lock and fogging.

              Of course, my glasses fog up anyway.

              • I also had a Schubert helmet (C3 Pro). I have had no luck with pin lock and fogging.

                Of course, my glasses fog up anyway.

                Interesting. I've also got the C3, and the anti-fog does work perfectly for me (apart from my glasses fogging up sometimes [photochromic, toughened plastic, in case it matters], which I can usually fix by cracking the visor open a tiny bit).

    • I want this immediately for my motorcycle visor.

      I know that there are a few helmets that you can get a heated visor for. The Bell MX9 Adventure is one of them. I have no idea how its powered though.

  • I immediately thought of the Canopy of the F-22 and other US jets that use gold in the canopy. It seems that in that case it has nothing to do with temperature control but rather to scatter radar pulses. Oh well.

  • Can I touch it? (Score:3)

    by pahles ( 701275 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @10:43AM (#63127300)
    How scratch resistant is this stuff?

  • As a glasses-wearer, almost the only time I have problems with fogging is when moving from an air conditioned space to outdoors in the summer, which results in instantly-opaque glasses. Don't think a few degrees warmer is going to help when going from 70F to 100F @ 90% humidity in 5 seconds. Same in the winter when walking inside from 40F to 70F.

  • Meh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TrentTheThief ( 118302 ) on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @11:18AM (#63127390)

    How's it going to perform when someone walks out of a frigid server room into a normal environment with humidity? Without real sunlight, it seems that you're still going to have fogged glasses since I doubt florescent tubes will help much. Same thing for night and very cloudy days.

    How useful will these _really_ be during the winter months?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      How's it going to perform when someone walks out of a frigid server room into a normal environment with humidity? Without real sunlight, it seems that you're still going to have fogged glasses since I doubt florescent tubes will help much. Same thing for night and very cloudy days.

      How useful will these _really_ be during the winter months?

      Well, my glasses fog up when I step from outside to inside, so that's the same situation as stepping from a frigid server room to the normal office environment. After all,

  • I can't recall ever experiencing sunlight and fog at the same time. Perhaps this invention is intended for a climate or weather pattern I'm not familiar with. It would be nice to have something to prevent glasses from fogging from one's own breath while wearing a plague mask.

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