Editor's Summary
7 February 2008
An added dimension
Three-dimensional holographic displays simulate natural human vision without the need for special eyewear. This makes them particularly suited to applications that require situational awareness, such as medical, industrial and military imaging. The current crop of commercial holographic 3D displays either lack image-updating capability (so are 'write-once' devices) or have poor image persistence. Tay et al. now report the development of a recording medium based on specially designed photorefractive polymers that combines a number of favourable properties. They demonstrate a holographic 3D display based on this material that can record and display new images every few minutes, has a significant size (4
4 inch), can be viewed for several hours without the need for refreshing, and can be readily erased and updated with new images.
News and Views: Device physics: Update on 3D displays
Static three-dimensional images are easy to make using holographic techniques. Moving pictures are more of a problem. A palm-sized, updatable display using a specially designed polymer could be a breakthrough.
Joseph W. Perry
doi:10.1038/451636a
Letter: An updatable holographic three-dimensional display
Sava
Tay,
P.-A. Blanche,
R. Voorakaranam,
A. V. Tunç,
W. Lin,
S. Rokutanda,
T. Gu,
D. Flores,
P. Wang,
G. Li,
P. St Hilaire,
J. Thomas,
R. A. Norwood,
M. Yamamoto
&
N. Peyghambarian
doi:10.1038/nature06596
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (668K) | Supplementary information
