Night vision goggles have always been a sophisticated device to many people. But thanks to the “magic recipe” developed by the researchers at the Australian National University (ANU), adding this new material will grant night vision powers to an ordinary pair of glass.

The principle of night vision goggles is to convert the incident photons into electrons that light up a phosphor screen inside the device to create a visual image of the surrounding area. But this process consumes power and makes most of night vision goggles a power hungry device. The material (known as nanocrystal) created by the ANU team can be used to create night vision devices that forgo electricity completely by converting the incoming photons from infrared spectrum into visible light.

The major breakthrough ANU made is to successfully apply this unique nanocrystal on a plane of glass. The nanocrystal particle can be fabricated currently is 300 nanometers in diameter. Also, it requires light intense enough to make a conversion from infrared light to visible light. However, the research team hopes that further development will allow them to improve the efficiency and sensitivity of the conversion. By the time they are able to create a large quantity of these particles to cover the entire plane of glass, they can turn normal eye glasses to into night vision enabled goggles.