You’ve been on the slopes for hours, and the sun starts to peek through the clouds. “Oh man, I’ve got to switch out my lens,” you think. Not anymore! Material engineering graduate Max Gallant and his team have developed a transparent film that can change tint on command by applying a small amount of electricity. The idea for the thin film was developed in a materials ceramics class. Gallant and his classmates were learning about crystal structures and their unique properties. They discovered that this could be applied to tint-changing film that could be applied to goggles and larger-scale windows, eliminating the need to swap out goggles on cloudier days, and reducing energy consumed by air conditioning in homes. “There are many different materials that display this property, so we’re working to find one that is easiest to process, and we think we’ve found one,” Gallant said.
