I think it's about time I wrote about this story, as it has made the newspapers, including a good piece in the Guardian.
Basically, this follows on from something I have noted before, back in March 2019, whereby Chinese and American researchers extended the range of rodent vision by injecting nanoparticles into their eyes. Now, a team including some of the original researchers have put the nanoparticles into contact lenses which can achieve a similar effect in humans, who can report on their experience better than the mice.
I think it's important to note that the nanoparticles absorb photons with wavelengths in the range 800 to 1600 nm (a little more than the range of IR film or digital sensors) and emit it in the range 400 to 700 (visible light), mostly around 550 and 650. So this is not thermal imaging and it won't enable you to see in the dark (without suitable IR illumination). Also, because the partlcles absorb and then emit, two things happen. One is that the upconversion takes some energy, so the intensity will be reduced. The other is that this doesn't appear likely to give you a sharp image but whether the result looks like the old HIE halation or is basically foggy isn't clear. My guess is the latter. So you could detect an IR source but it wouldn't look like an IR photograph. However, the team say that using their material in glasses makes things sharper, so I may be misunderstanding the process.
Another bonus, which the news coverage picked up on, is that the IR passes easily through thin skin, such as your eyelids, so you can see the results even with your eyes closed.
Different input wavelengths can be shifted to different output wavelengths. This isn't like colour infrared film but is actually more interesting and nuanced, with the examples reported by the Guardian being 980nm shifted to blue, 808nm to green and 1532nm to red.
I look forward to finding out more.
[Original paper: www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(25)00454-4]
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