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New screen coating makes mobile phones more visible in the sunlight

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Inspired by moth eyes, researchers have developed a new antireflection film to be used on mobile phones.

The film has a surface reflection of just 0.23%, compared to 4.4% on a standard iPhone screen surface, according to a press release from the journal Optica, where the findings were published.

“Using our flexible antireflection film on smartphones and tablets will make the screen bright and sharp, even when viewed outside,” Shin-Tson Wu, PhD, of the College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida, said in the release. “In addition to exhibiting low reflection, our nature-inspired film is also scratch-resistant and self-cleaning, which would protect touch screens from dust and fingerprints.”

Wu and colleagues were inspired by the nanostructure of moth eyes, and were able to fabricate that structure large enough to be used as a screen coating. The researchers found that the film provided four times improvement in contrast ratio in sunlight and 10 times improvement in the shade.