Electrochromic

As sunlight passes through a building's windows it can cause indoor temperatures to rise, to the point that the structure's air conditioning system has to be used. A new window material, however, blocks incoming heat while staying mostly transparent.

You may have heard of electrochromic windows that can be electronically switched between clear and tinted states. Well, the same technology has been applied to a new material that could both heat and cool buildings, if mounted on their outside walls.

Tech startup Ampere has smartened up the humble sunglasses with Dusk, a pair of shades that change tint on demand via a phone app or a button press. A deluxe model also packs built-in speakers and a microphone for making calls.

E-waste is a growing problem, so if an electronic component can't be reused or recycled, it should at least be biodegradable. That's where an experimental new electronic display comes in, as it can be composted when no longer needed.

If you're tired of sliding the shades up and down on airplane windows, then you might want to fly on a Boeing 777X. This week, it was announced that some of the aircraft will forgo the shades for electronically-dimmable windows (EDWs).

Future windows could change their tint or opacity on demand to keep out unwanted heat, light or nosy neighbors. A team from Princeton has now developed a self-powered “smart window” system that uses a transparent solar cell to harvest UV energy from sunlight.

Electrochromic glass that switches from translucent to transparent and vice versa is currently limited to a blue tint. That's set to change with a new manufacturing technique that increases the color options on offer, while also speeding up the switching process by almost 10 times.

Companies are experimenting with ways to balance glass' ability to let light in with the need for a little privacy. Now, Kinestral has unveiled a new system of smart-tinting glass called Halio, which can be adjusted manually or set up to switch automatically.

Current electrochromic window tinting technologies are generally slow to change state, struggle to achieve high levels of darkness, and rely on a constant current to maintain their tint. A team at MIT has developed an energy-efficient thin film material that overcomes these shortcomings.

If you're bursting in and out of shadowy forests, the slow reaction time of photochromic glasses just can't keep up. That's where Uvex's Variotronic glasses come in, which change tint in just a tenth of a second. We recently tried a pair out.

In less than a year, electrochromic sunglasses have gone from being experimental to an actual product, with Ctrl announcing its Ctrl One cycling glasses just this month. Should you prefer multi-use electronically-tinting sunglasses, however, you might want to get yourself a pair of Skugga shades.

Glasses with transitional lenses are a neat idea in theory, but they have some shortcomings in practice. That's why researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing an alternative – clear eyeglasses that can be manually tinted into sunglasses, by the user.