Human eyes don\u2019t register the infrared portion of the light spectrum because infrared photons don’t carry enough energy to trigger the signaling pathway inside our light-sensing cells. But we\u2019ve been able to make devices that give us a visual representation of what\u2019s happening in the infrared.<\/p>\n
A team at the Beijing Institute of Technology, led by Xin Tang and Ge Mu, has now built a device that lets people see infrared in a new way. Instead of just translating it to visible shades of green as it\u2019s done in standard night-vision goggles, it translates different infrared wavelengths into distinct parts of the visual spectrum, giving the eye something closer to natural vision.<\/p>\n
Researchers achieved that by combining mercury telluride colloidal quantum dots, which absorb infrared light, and a dual-layer OLED, which converts that absorbed energy into visible color. Stacked together with the right internal wiring, they make incoming infrared radiation come out the other side as an ordinary-looking, full-color image.<\/p>\n