In a paper in Nature Mr. Tay and colleagues describe their thin-film polymer that can have images "written" to it in minutes and can be wiped as quickly to take and display another image.

The material has been shown to stay stable throughout hundreds of write and erase cycles.

The ability to quickly refresh images in holographs could mean that surgeons use them as a guide during operations or as a better way for pharmaceutical researchers to study molecular interactions for new drugs during simulations.