Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a way to create color-shifting items mimicking natural iridescence — using a compact handheld device to "paint" a holographic film with light.

"We wanted to tap into the innate intelligence of nature," says lead author Paris Myers of the team’s "MorphoChrome" invention. "In the past, you couldn’t easily synthesize structural color yourself, but using pigments or dyes gave you full creative expression. With our system, you have full creative agency over this new material space, predictably programming iridescent designs in real-time."

MorphoChrome lets you define how colors should shift in software then apply that to a holographic film with a small handheld laser tool. (📹: Myers et al)

The MorphoChrome system starts in software, allowing its users to program exactly how the colors of an object should shift when viewed at different angles. Once programmed, a holographic photopolymer film — the material used to add security markings to bank cards and passports — is treated to a blast of RGB laser light from a handheld gadget roughly the size of a glue bottle, then bonded to the object to create the iridescent surface.

To prove the concept, the team has used MorphoChrome to create objects ranging from artistic to practical: a butterfly necklace shifts its colors depending on the angle from which it’s viewed, while a pair of golfing gloves shine green when their user is gripping the club correctly.

"The polymer sheet we went with here is holographic, which has potential beyond what we’re showing here," notes co-author Yunyi Zhu of a potential focus for future work expanding the MorphoChrome concept. "We’re working on adapting our process for creating entire 3D light fields in one film."

More information on the project, which was presented at the ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication late last year, is available on the ACM Digital Library.