能发射激光的隐形眼镜，要不要去下单！
科学家创造出了一种可以发射出激光的超薄柔性薄膜，并成功地利用隐形眼镜进行了测试，证明了激光眼的可能性。
Before you rush out and buy a Cyclops-style visor, it's not even close to powerful enough to cause damage. Instead, the researchers say, the technology has potential for use as wearable security tags, or even as a type of laser barcode.
在你冲出去下订单之前，我们先说好，它的功率太小不足以造成实际的伤害。相反，研究人员说，这项技术有可能用作可穿戴的安全标签，甚至成为一种激光条码。
The membranes containing the material are less than a thousandth of a millimetre thick, and flexible, which means they can easily be stuck to, or embedded into, polymer banknotes, or the soft plastics used for flexible contact lenses.
这种的薄膜厚度小于千分之一毫米，并且具有柔韧性，这意味着它们可以很容易地粘贴或嵌入到塑质钞票上或柔性隐形眼镜上。
The laser is created by stamping nanoscale gratings into thin polymer membranes that are grown on glass substrates, Neil Savage described for IEEE Spectrum.These membranes can then be placed on other surfaces.When illuminated by another laser, it emits laser light of its own, with wavelengths between 420 and 700 nm, as defined by the structure and material of the grating, which can be adjusted to emit specific wavelengths, and even to emit light like the series of ones and zeroes in a barcode.
Neil Savage对IEEE Spectrum描述说，激光是通过将纳米级光栅压印到生长在玻璃基底上的薄聚合物膜上产生的。这些薄膜可以依附在其他物体的表面上。当被另一部激光器照射时，它发射出自己的激光，其波长在420-700nm之间，由光栅的结构和材料所决定。可以调节发射出特定波长的激光，并且甚至可以发射出类似于光条形码中的代表1和0的光信号。
This laser light is very low-powered, only around a nanowatt. That's a billionth of a watt - not remotely enough to power a small light. But it's enough to be picked up by a scanner - and would be excellent for security tags, the research team said.
这种激光器的功耗非常低，仅为纳瓦级。这是一瓦特的十亿分之一——远远不足以启动一小盏电灯。但是这足以被扫描仪采集到，而且对于安全标签来说是恰到好处。
"It would be very difficult for someone else to make a laser that had exactly the same wavelength," senior researcher and physicist Malte Gather of the University of St Andrews told Spectrum.
“其他人想要制造具有完全相同的波长的激光器，将是非常困难的。”圣安德鲁斯大学的高级研究员兼物理学家Malte Gather告诉Spectrum。
To test it, the research team integrated the membrane into a contact lens, which they stuck onto the excised eyeball of a cow - popular for this sort of testing for its structural similarity to the human eye, coupled with easy availability.
为了测试它，研究团队将薄膜整合到了一片隐形眼镜中，它们粘在了来自一只牛的被切除的眼球上——这种实验样本与人眼的结构相似，很受科学家的欢迎，而且非常容易获取。
They also stuck one of the membranes onto one of the researcher's thumbnails. Both membranes produced a laser beam - and, importantly, the contact lens laser consistently remained within the safe zone for repeated eye exposure.
他们还将其中一瓣膜片黏在了研究人员的拇指指甲上。两处膜均产生了激光束——重要的是，隐形眼镜中的激光，确实会接触到眼睛，但却始终保持在安全的能级内。
"We have demonstrated the fabrication and operation of ultra-thin, substrate-less organic lasers with extreme mechanical flexibility and lightweight," the researchers wrote in their paper. "These physical properties, combined with the low lasing threshold and the ability to generate unique output spectra, allows the application of membrane lasers as security label that can be applied to a wide range of substrates including banknotes, contact lenses, and fingernails."
研究人员在他们的论文中写道：“我们已经展示了具有极端机械灵活性和轻量级的超薄无基底有机激光器的制造和操作过程。这些物理特性与低激态阈值和产生独特输出光谱的能力相结合，可以将膜激光器作为安全标签应用于广泛的基材，包括纸币，隐形眼镜和指甲。”
The researchers also suggest it could move from prototype to mass production without much effort.
研究人员还表示，可以毫不费力地从实验原型转向工业大规模生产。
"By combining recently developed roll-to-roll nanoimprint and organic ink jet printing technology, membrane lasers could be mass-produced with high reproducibility and at low cost."
“通过结合最近开发的卷对卷纳米压印和有机喷墨印刷技术，膜激光器可以被批量生产，它们的可重复性良好，成本低廉。”
The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
该研究已发表在Nature Communications杂志上。
