Smaller & Cooler Night Vision Thanks To Graphene

Everyone knows that green hue of the night vision goggles, from TV or games you’ve seen them help police and search and rescue teams with spotting people from a distance or soldiers using them to gain that upper hand in the night. One thing you may have noticed though is that the night vision you see people wearing tends to be large devices and are often very heavy. The reason for this is quite simply because most night vision units require cryogenic cooling due to the heat the materials and electronics generate; that could soon change though with the use of graphene.

Graphene is a semi-conducting material, meaning it absorbs electric charges and its roughly 100 times stronger than steel. MIT researchers have built a new chip out of the material, designed to help keep night vision goggles cool and even minimize the size of the night vision goggles.

While able to pick up a hand and logo the next step they hope to achieve is to increase the resolution of the images, with its size enabling the devices to be inserted into devices as small as smartphones they want to make sure that the technology is of a high enough quality to be used in everyday systems. One of the suggested uses is in your windscreens, meaning that your screen could display night vision in real time, reducing all those lights that block your eyes while your driving.