Say goodbye to blinds: Tunable windows for privacy and camouflage

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a technique that can quickly change the opacity of a window, turning it cloudy, clear or somewhere in between with the flick of a switch.
Tunable windows aren’t new but most previous technologies have relied on electrochemical reactions achieved through expensive manufacturing. This technology, however, uses geometry adjust the transparency of a window. The tunable window is comprised of a sheet of glass or plastic, sandwiched between transparent, soft elastomers sprayed with a coating of silver nanowires, too small to scatter light on their own. With an applied voltage, the nanowires on either side of the glass are energized to move toward each other, squeezing and deforming the soft elastomer. Because the nanowires are distributed unevenly across the surface, the elastomer deforms unevenly. The resulting uneven roughness causes light to scatter, turning the glass opaque. The change happens in less than a second.

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/03/tunable-windows-for-privacy-camouflage

 

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I shouldn't want to be engaged in "private" activity when the power failed!

 

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