Dichroic laminated glass is a type of manufactured glass designed to change colors under different lighting conditions and viewing angles.
The word dichroic comes from two Greek roots: “di” meaning two and “chroma” meaning colors. The name refers to the way in which the glass can shift colors, displaying multiple hues depending on your angle of viewing and ambient lighting conditions.
Creating dichroic glass is accomplished in one of two ways.The first involves a laminated glass sheet, which incorporates color-changing film. This is the easiest and most straightforward method. Many glass manufacturers have the machinery and know-how to accomplish this method.The second method, however, creates a monolithic solid glass sheet.
This is not laminated, and it requires the use of intricate, costly machinery. It can only be accomplished by glass manufacturers with access to a metal deposition chamber.In this second manufacturing process, an electron beam in the vacuum chamber vaporizes various transparent oxides of metals, including titanium, chromium, aluminum, and others. The resulting vapor condenses on the glass substrate in a crystalline structure.
This results in extremely thin layers of metal on each piece of the finished glass. How thin? Anywhere from thirty to fifty layers can be present in any piece of dichroic glass sheets, but the entire coating is only about 30 to 35 millionths of an inch.
Dichroic glass is a type of glass that contains multiple layers of metal oxides. These layers are designed to reflect certain wavelengths of light while allowing others to pass through. As a result, dichroic glass appears to change color when viewed from different angles. The colors produced by dichroic glass are typically very bright and vibrant.
Incredible ability to change color when exposed to different light sources is what makes it so remarkable.
