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Comment by unwind | Hacker News Reader

So, it's a thin layer of gold consisting of all-connected particles, thus forming a conducting layer. Then they sandwich that between layers of titanium oxide for protection, not sure if that will help with mechanical durability.

Since it's dependent on an external source of (I guess infrared radiation) heat, it will not work in e.g. winter in the Nordics when there's not a lot of sunshine around.

My conclusion: it's designed for fancy skiing folks in Switzerland's sunny alps, not tired parents trying to see where the fsck the kids went when coming home after picking them up in the afternoon. Time for sunset in Stockholm today: 2:56 pm.

On a more serious note this really sounds promising, all development that improve aspects of wearing glasses is of course awesome since not all can/want to use contacts etc.

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Hi there,

I am a co-author of the mentioned work and very surprised (but pleased) to see it here.

I think that this is a good overview!

On the material part the sweet spot is the transition from assemblies of particles to forming a continuous path (film).

For the application you indeed need sunlight. The sun is a strong radiation source!

Putting your face under a light bulb might cause other issues.

Glasses is here the most accessible example to illustrate the work from the research to the application. I think we can get creative about other use cases.

Thanks! Apologies if I sounded overly salty/negative, that was not my intention. I don't ski, but obviously skiers also deserve seeing where they are going, it has safety benefits. :)

I'd have to say that any small heat source might make this technology quite workable. Even conducting a bit of heat from your head to the glasses frame, to the lens coatings, perhaps?

> Putting your face under a light bulb might cause other issues.

Radiate it from the inside, at some invisible wave legth that doesn't reflect too much?

Could it be useful for automobile windscreens? The article says it's solved for cars with embedded wires but this is not generally seen in the front windscreen - probably because it impairs vision and maybe even makes the glass less robust. I checked and it seems now we do have windscreens with electric heat but perhaps your system could be adapted to the lower end cars.

Yes, of course there is still much work left for full scale industrializing but nothing insurmountable in view.

My Ford Fiesta has windscreen heating. IIRC the patent is owned by Ford but I could be wrong.

Not really. Windscreen heating is quite common in the industry, and the patents lie with the glass suppliers (No Vehicle Company builds their glass themselves). Most common techniques are thin tungsten wires or a heatable thin metal layer which additionally acts as IR-reflection.

You say it’s common but it didn’t used to be. It was common on Fords but no other vehicle manufacturer had it. Rear window heating, sure. But not front windscreen.

Moreover, Ford dealerships (in the U.K. at least) would boast that they owned the patent.

Looking online, I can see lots of references on car enthusiast sites talking about Ford owning the patent but any documents on the patent I find states it’s owned by an independent window manufacturer (like you suggested it would be).

So that leaves me wondering if either Ford had the patent but then sold it (unlikely in my opinion), or if they simply bought exclusively rights?

Surely Volvo had it? Feels like a very Volvo feature.

The VW egolf had it in 2015 or so…

Yeah, I’m talking a good few years ago now.

The patent would have long since expired — never mind any deals between patent holders.

Do you have a link? The patent I could find was filed by Ford and expired in 2015: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5824993A/en

Actually that patent looks different to what I'm describing.

The only car I’ve ever owned with a heated windscreen was a Ford Focus. It worked a treat and was still really useful even after some of the conductors corroded and stopped working.

Oh man, our Ford Mondeo (UK must be 15 years ago) had the fine heating wires in the front windscreen - best defrost/demist ever, almost instantaneous compared to every other vehicle I've driven. Definitely a feature that would sway me from choosing one vehicle over another!

I've had heated windscreens in various Škodas for 10+ years - now a must have feature for me when buying a new car.

For some reason I've always remembered that Concorde electrically heated its windows using a laminated layer of gold:

https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-fuselage-windows

Plenty of houses in the UK in older buildings where it would be great in windows.

Why titania protection layers and not silica or alumina?

Titania has higher refractive index. It helps improve slightly the performance.

> Time for sunset in Stockholm today: 2:56 pm.

Sunset? Time for sunrise here is around mid-day, January 21st :)

I can see this being integrated into Apple’s AR headset that can tap into a battery for heat for a “defogging” function.

> My conclusion: it's designed for fancy skiing folks in Switzerland's sunny alps, not tired parents trying to see where the fsck the kids went when coming home after picking them up in the afternoon.

Yeah I got that at "gold layer".

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