At the University of Mexico and Los Alamos National Laboratories, they have recently been inventing a hair straightening iron that changes hair colour when applied. Researchers and inventors have found that small spiral patterns that they call ‘gratings’ engraved into individual hairs, will reflect the light in a way that will change hair colour permanently.

Obviously, for customers, hair dying is costly, takes up time and, most importantly, damages your hair. This invention would be a god send for most women as they would be able to get their hair dyed quicker and probably for a lower cost. The products would look like hair straighteners and could be used to colour or ‘press’ a pattern into hair.

The inventors are not just looking at this invention for hair; it would also be used to put patterns into different materials. This invention would be perfect for any customers who have dye allergies or sensitive skin and would also work better than any dye on dark hair! So finally brunettes will be able to go any colour they want!

The engineers developed patterns on individual strands of hair using a ‘focused ion beam’ (FIB) that reflects bandwidths of light depending on how spread out, wide and deep the separate lines are. Patterns called Archimedean spirals and hyperbola were used to reflect light in a way so that it appeared to change colour.

The test was carried out on brown, blonde and black hair and was seen to work best on brown hair. This invention is worth 1 million dollars which is not practical for any beauty salon due to the beauty insurance costs, but engineers will research the product more because it could potentially permanently change the colour of someone’s hair and in the long run, save time and money. The colour would be changed by swapping the ‘paddles’ on the product.

Scientists are also further researching how they can do a temporary dye which may make first time users feel less nervous. This would be achieved by coating the hair with a conditioner which will be ‘grated’ instead of the actual hair getting ‘grated’ so that they can then wash it out.

Professor Leseman said: “That’s one way to do it, to make the pattern directly onto your hair…and that would be more of a permanent change until it grows out. The other idea…is to actually develop some kind of conditioner – some kind of polymer coating for your hair. Then when you do the patterning with your flat iron that’s specially developed for this polymer coating – maybe low heat – then you could actually pattern the conditioner or the polymer on your hair. And then it would easily wash out if you wanted it to go away, so that’s not as permanent and as scary.”

As well as a device used for colouring hair without the effects of bleach, it can be used as a security measure on credit card readers or even to see, on a battlefield, who is on your team or not. Professor Leseman added: “We talked about the possibility of an optical band pass and this would lead to identifying a friendly soldier if you can wear a pattern like this, possibly on an armour jacket.

“The identification could change like the old style military code books. You could issue a new roll of tape with a different pattern on it once a month and you know that there’s a certain colour of laser which will return from that. If it is somebody else’s pattern, then you know you don’t have a friendly.”

So all the benefits of the device have been listed but, as with anything, there are the downfalls of the product. At the moment the main downfall is the cost, as at one million dollars it will not be appealing to almost any beauty salon, so for at least another few years it is doubtful that these will be seen in any salons. The other disadvantage is that, at the moment, they don’t know any damages that the device may have, because it hasn’t been around long enough or tested enough. It will take a few more years to research the device fully before salons are able to buy the product anyway.

Photo by Pixabay