Science

If you’re contemplating why you’d even need a transparent smartphone, don’t bother thinking too hard for you do not actually need one. There would be many downsides to such a phone; think of how difficult it would be to find it especially if it were powered down, not to mention being literally “transparent” means everything you’re working on will be easily exposed to others. Yet, if you take a harder look at the subject, you’ll find that the state of being non-transparent, or let’s say opaque, is indeed the more fragile state to be in. Once transparency is possessed by nature, opacity can be obtained just like any other option under the menu, while this does not go vice versa. Polytron Technologies from Taiwan are developing a prototype device in a bid to make the transparent smartphone a reality.

There are two creatures that have the unique ability to extract pigment-free color directly from the quantum, so to speak, and those are butterflies and jellyfish. These two obscure yet magnificent creatures can do so through precisely configured scales or undulating cilia- tiny hairs that protrude from a larger cell. These bio-antennea are used to bling out a calculated photon whenever the distance between thee hairs corresponds to the wavelength of the illumination that strikes them. Sometimes when creatures are stuck in a cave, they instantly turn down their pigment production and thus losing all ability to express it even after a couple of generations have passed. This is all for a beneficial reason since light-absorbing melanins and carotenoids are metabolically expensive to produce and actuate into position.

Yet, if we take larger creatures, such as in our case Smartphones, there are tons of elements that arise to obstruct transparency. For instance, the lens of the eye ought to burn a non-trivial amount of energy just to sustain transparency. In order to transform a large scale device to a transparent one, the first thing you ought to do is consider the smaller parts that comprise it and making those transparent. While you might think this is rather obvious, you’ll have neglected the fact that it isn’t enough to just put those transparent parts together to achieve your goal. The most challenging task you’ll have is to gain a smooth variation in the refractive indexes across the sub components.

Nowadays we can enjoy a variety of transparent display options that are available, and new methods are emerging all the time. One way to achieve this is to coat two pieces of glass with transparent yet conductive material sucha s indium tin oxide (ITO), and sandwich a gel of polarizable molecules between them. Once an electric field is applied, the liquid crystal changes its alignment and becomes transparent or non transparent, adhering to the materials that are used.
The display is not the issue for the Polytron phone which flaunts an OLED-based liquid crystal device. The problem lies in the smaller components, such as the battery and the memory. Transparent lithium-ion batteries have been formerly introduced based on PDMS; a favorite polymer material that is often used in the life sciences to build transparent microfluidic sensors and Polutron plans to incorporate these kinds of batteries in future versions of the phone. Transparent speakers and touchscreens will also be used on both sides of the final product.