Chinese scientists are developing a paint that can change color according to your mood of the day, says the online magazine numerama.com. The windows that change color at your whim in Blade Runner have not made you dream since they really exist? Chinese scientists might have developed the next trend in technological interior design.
We already knew the open solution Homelive proposed by Orange to control from your smartphone all your household or even the connected bulbs whose color can be ordered,... But did you know that from now on, even the walls of our houses will be able to change at will, by changing colours, no longer with colour charts and brushes but simply with our smartphone. ?
It was at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology that a team developed a paint that is already soberly called "chameleon": controlled by a smartphone, it can change colour once it is placed on a wall. The technology uses crystallized microbeads that can be modified through an electro-chemical process. Simply put, nano-particles are stimulated by an electric current that gives them information: inflate or deflate to reflect a different wavelength and thus display a different colour.
If the use of an electric current to stimulate them opens up the possibility for the person controlling them to choose the colour of their walls, the microbeads can also be stimulated automatically by heat. Doctor Du Xuemin's team has imagined scenarios that make you want to: imagine a rainy day, a long working day, hours in traffic jams on the way home. There, instead of finding a white that has turned grey because of the outside light on your walls, you are welcomed by a living room that has become pastel, colourful, immediately cheerful. Thus, the colour of your walls could be more colourful, as colour directly influences behaviour and emotions.
The range of colours on offer varies from magenta to deep blue to green, and the team says the paint can change colour several times without losing its lustre. This emerging technology is similar to what Philips already offers in luminaires: the builder's Hue allows you to control the intensity and colour of your lighting. These connected bulbs are, to date, one of the most advanced intelligent objects, thanks in particular to their ease of use and their open development platform, which has enabled many developers to offer applications that multiply the possibilities of the initial offering.
Already, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, USA, created in early 2015 what they call a "chameleon skin"... flexible, a chameleon coating that changes colour on demand and reacts when bent or stretched. The process is based on a nanometric etching technique that plays on the refraction of the wavelength of the colour. (Photo ©Connie Chang-Hasnain, UC Berkeley)
The marketing of connected painting will wait a few more years, but Doctor Du Xuemin is confident : "I prefer to take precautions, but I think a commercial version of our test will be available within three years. » he confided to China Morning.
Nature continues to inspire mankind, notably thanks to certain species of butterflies and beetles whose iridescent colours come from a play with the wavelength of light. To meditate.
(Source : numerama.com- October 2015)
