Bug-eyed Tech

The glare from the sun can make it hard to read a cell phone’s screen. Sunlight reflected off its surface can be brighter than the light emitted by the screen itself. A new material that borrows a trick from moths could make squinting at your phone a thing of the past.

Tiny structures cover moths’ eyes, forming a mesh-like pattern. These nanostructures prevent light from reflecting off the insects’ eyes at night, which helps keep them hidden from predators. Shin-Tson Wu, a physicist at the University of Central Florida, recently developed a thin film with a texture similar to moths’ eyes. When applied to a phone’s screen, it reduced reflected light by 89 percent. “Soon, you won’t need to search for shade just to read your phone outside,” says Wu.