United States: Individual particles in light travel in waves. Light visible as different colors is determined by the wavelength, which also shows its energy level.
How do Light and Color Work?
About 400 to 700 nanometers is the range that the eye can notice on the visible spectrum. Because our vision doesn’t reach those wavelengths, we miss out on seeing infrared light, which has greater wavelengths.
So until now, seeing infrared meant relying on night-vision gadgets that had their own power supply and were rather big.
Scientists at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, eastern China, have designed a contact lens that lets people see visible light where there is only infrared light, dw.com reported.
The team, led by Yuqian Ma, is using soft contact lenses mixed with 45-nanometer particles made of gold, sodium gadolinium fluoride, and ytterbium and erbium ions.
Nanoparticle-infused contact lenses can transform infrared radiation into different colours of visible light, potentially enabling a new form of night vision – no batteries required. https://t.co/sZFgHUuqYb
— New Scientist (@newscientist) June 2, 2025
How the Infrared Lenses Work?
The upconversion contact lenses (UCLs) take infrared light that is between 800 and 1,600 nanometers and make it visible, the team explained in the scientific journal Cell.
Adding nanoparticles helps give more energy to infrared light waves. So, they turn infrared light into the main primary colors, making them visible as images to people.
Blurry Vision? Here’s the Fix
A problem with these lenses is that the images they produce are blurry; this happens because nanoparticles in the lenses scatter and change the light, which the team tried to fix by adding additional lenses.
However, infrared contact lenses cannot match night vision goggles, which boost the weak signals they receive into strong enough forms to view.
Nanoparticles were introduced into the eyes of mice, and their actions showed they were able to see in dim light, dw.com reported.
Thanks to their non-invasive nature, the new contact lenses avoid the need for injections into our retinas, which makes them much more practical.