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©NewScientist

Just read a great article on NewScientist.com that explains an emerging technology that could one day make it possible to have documents wipe themselves clean after being read.

The technology was developed by a team at Northwestern University, and  works by shining UV light onto coated nanoparticles that are contained between plastic sheets, then writing the intended message.

When the UV light is turned off, the nanoparticles disperse and the image disappears.

By varying the concentration of the chemicals that get coated onto the nanoparticles, the team was able to control the visibility of the image from hours to days.

Read the article in it’s entirety here.