科学美国人60秒 SSS 飞蛾帮你改进智能手机屏(在线收听

Moths Inspire Better Smartphone Screens

One of the things that makes your smartphone so smart is that if you pull it out in the sun, it senses that—and dials up the screen brightness to compensate. But it's not a perfect solution.

智能手机非常智能的一个表现就是,如果你把它放在阳光下,它就会感受到强光——然后将屏幕亮度调高来应对变化。但这并不是针对这种情况的一个完美的解决方案。

"First of all it's still not bright enough—you have to remember how respectable sunlight is." Shin-Tson Wu, a physicist at the University of Central Florida. The other problem, he says of the brightened screen, is it kills the battery.

“首先,它仍然不够明亮——你必须记住阳光有多么强烈。”吴诗聪——中佛罗里达大学的一名物理学家。他说另一个问题是,屏幕更亮也就更费电池。

So Wu and colleagues have fabricated a battery-sparing alternative: an anti-reflective screen coating. Based on the eyes of moths.

吴诗聪和同事们制作了一个更省电池的替代品:一种防反光的屏幕保护膜。该设计灵感来自于飞蛾的眼睛。

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

“自然界是非常富有的!我们可以从自然中学到很多东西。”

The thing Wu and others have learned about moth eyes, is that they're bumpy, studded with tiny projections. That uneven surface reduces the reflection of light off their eyes—thought to help the bugs evade predators, and see better in low light.

吴诗聪和其他人发现了飞蛾眼睛的一个特征——它们崎岖不平,且布满了微小的投影。这种不均匀的表面减少了眼睛光线的反射,而这帮助它们躲避了捕食者,并使它们在光线较低的时候看得更清楚。

So Wu and his team built a similar surface with tiny dimples, to cut down on glare. He says the dimpled coating could boost the readability of a screen by five to 10 times, compared to a normal smartphone screen. The details are in the journal Optica.

吴诗聪和他的团队用酒窝型小凹槽建造了一个类似的表面,以减少刺眼的光线。他说,与普通的智能手机屏幕相比,调光的保护膜能使屏幕的可读性提高5到10倍。有关详情刊登在《光学杂志》(Optica)上。

The tech hasn't been commercialized yet, and that could take a few years. Which gives researchers time to take advantage of another property of these surfaces: they’re flexible. Meaning the possibility of curved or bendable displays. Combine that with the bendy batteries we reported on in a recent podcast, and it looks like the smartphones of the future could be set for a real metamorphosis.

这项技术还没有被商业化,而被商业化可能需要好几年。这给了研究人员时间去利用这种表面的另一属性:它们的灵活性。这意味着他们或许会创造出弯曲或可弯曲的显示器。结合我们最近播出过的可弯曲电池——看起来智能手机未来可能要发生真正的蜕变哦。

  原文地址:http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/sasss/2018/5/451822.html