Holographic videos in color and low cost

2013/06/26 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Fisika
• Teknologia

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a prototype of holographic color video. It is much cheaper than monochrome appliances that are currently manufactured at the laboratory level. The device has been reported in the journal Nature. It has a resolution similar to that of a television and updates the image every 30 seconds to create illusion of movement. The researchers say it has cost them about 10 dollars to make the optical chip that is the heart of the device.

At the base, another researcher at MIT has used the technique developed years ago for the realization of the first holographic videos. This technique consists of diffusing the light that will pass through this material through small variations in a transparent material caused by the sound waves generated with great precision. That is, the sound waves cause the material to loosen or tighten at a point, and when passing through it a laser breaks down in one way or another, in this way the hologram is formed. Now, in addition to various technical improvements, this transparent material has been replaced by a large and expensive tellurium dioxide crystal by a small and much cheaper lithium niobate crystal.

On the other hand, it has been emphasized the interest of the technique in the realization of conventional screens by the mixture of colors. In fact, on conventional screens there are tricolor subpixels (red, green and blue) for every pixel. Here, on the other hand, a color more or less will go through the transparent material, depending on the frequency of the sound waves.