Discovering nanotechnology: The ForgetSPECS Journey (Part 2)
So how did a banker get into nanotechnology, I hear you ask?
Necessity is the mother of all inventions. When I lost my reading glasses in Spain, I asked myself, “Why am I looking at glass through glass? Why can’t a prescription be in or on the glass of a phone?
That was the beginning - I jumped straight into research mode.
First, I investigated developing an app. I recruited a freelance optical engineer in Poland and an app developer in Australia. We quickly worked out that an app wasn’t going to provide the best solution. In fact, it turns out, that isn’t possible. So I investigated alternatives.
After exploring many options, I landed on embedding lenses into phone screen protectors.
There was nothing like this on the market.
Again, I needed to call in the experts, so in 2016, I reached out to the best physicists and optometrists to help me design and build this thing! My search went worldwide, from Singapore to Melbourne, Sydney, Poland, Brisbane, Perth, Germany, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, San Francisco, Japan and China. So many knock-backs! This made me wonder “could this even be done?”.
I started making many local and international connections in the optical world by attending networking events and conferences. This was key to identifying the right technology and partners. I approached many universities and optometrists and was told many times “it can’t be done”. In my research, I came across an emerging technology - nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is where science is conducted at the nanoscale, a scale so small that we can’t even see it with a light microscope. In fact, one nanometer is one-billionth of a meter in size. To put this into perspective, there are 25,400,000 nanometers in an inch.
After many knockbacks, I eventually piqued someone’s interest, Professor of Optometry, David Atchison at QUT in Brisbane - my own backyard, perfect! Initially, he doubted it could be done, but with some collaboration with Physicist, Marwan Suheimat, we agreed that we would give this a go and formed a research partnership.
By September 2016, we had scoped a research and development project. It was a long and exhausting process, resulting in three major designs. Each one was an enhancement on the other and in late 2017, we registered our first provisional patent, closely followed by our second in early 2018.
What we have created is a world-first screen protector that uses nano-technology to create millions of tiny lenses that are embedded in a thin film.
When all these lenses come together, they bring the screen into focus by adjusting the light emitted from the device. This compensates for vision impairment and allows you to read your device clearly with or without glasses.
I have learnt so much on this journey. My everyday vocabulary now includes words such as dioptres, nanometres, microns, light spectrums, UV curing, nano imprint lithography, refractive index, polymers, polyethylene, polycarbonates, and moire effects. A far cry from my other life as a banker!
Next up, I had to find someone to manufacture it. What I didn’t realise then, was this was going to be the most challenging part of the process. Had we just designed a product too advanced for where nanotechnology manufacturing was at?
Next up, I’ll share the ForgetSPECS rollercoaster journey to finding a manufacturing partner.
Until next time,
Darrell