You may soon be able to avoid foggy glasses thanks to a new technology that uses gold.
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 triathlonHow | 2024-05-04 13:00:32 |  2,961 Views |
3 brilliant anti-fog tricks for swimming goggles
Researchers in Switzerland have developed a special coating to prevent moisture condensation on lenses. The researchers say in a new paper that their approach can also be used on car windshields. It's one of a growing number of technologies aimed at solving the everyday but persistent problem of foggy glass.
"Most approaches fundamentally rely on changing the surface wettability," Iwan Haechler, one of the researchers on the Swiss team, told Lifewire in an email interview. "For example, there are anti-fog sprays, which create a very thin film of water on the surface. This is called a superhydrophilic surface. The problem is contamination. Because water loves water, it also loves everything else, including dirt. And just a little impurity on the surface renders it useless, which is why you always have to reapply those sprays.
The team from Switzerland's ETH Zurich institute developed a coating made in a special clean room where small amounts of gold are deposited on the surface. The layer absorbs solar radiation selectively. Half of the energy in sunlight is in the infrared spectrum, and the other half in the visible light and UV radiation spectrum.
