The cloak that renders one invisible is a common element in mythology and fairy-tales, but new materials with surprising properties bring the idea closer to reality by providing novel ways of manipulating light.
The development of structured synthetic materials with unusual electromagnetic properties, so-called metamaterials, promises to provide access to special physical effects of great technological interest. Metamaterials have already been fabricated that have a negative refractive index for electromagnetic waves – bending them in the opposite sense to light waves entering water, for instance – which opens up completely novel opportunities for the manipulation of light. One of these makes it possible, in principle, to create cloaking devices that seem to make objects disappear. Indeed, such an invisibility cloak has already been realized for microwaves.
“The production of metamaterials for the manipulation of microwaves presents no special technological challenges – but finding technically feasible ways of controlling the behavior of visible light in a similar fashion is a much more difficult task, because optical wavelengths are much shorter, on the order of half a micron,” says Professor Heinz Langhals of the Department of Chemistry at LMU. The first attempts to overcome the technical hurdles depended on the use of elaborate nanotechnological methods that cannot easily be scaled up. However, Langhals and his colleague Alexander Hofer have now synthesized metamaterials based on organic molecules as building blocks. This approach has several advantages over the metallic nanostructures previously used, as the synthetic procedures are more efficient, the components are smaller and their structures can be varied at will. The special geometry required for their metafunction is created entirely by chemical means.
The wrong way round
“We utilize organic compounds with so-called conjugated double-bond systems, which allow the electrons to circulate freely within the molecule,” Langhals explains. The necessary electromagnetic resonances arise from the presence in the compound of chromophores, which give the molecule a characteristic color. Chromophores resonantly absorb light in the visible portion of the spectrum. The crucial feature of the newly synthesized molecules is that they contain chromophore electron systems that are arranged in parallel, separated by spacers that permit length-dependent control of interactions between chromophores. This particular spatial configuration alters the refractive properties of the new materials, and in ways that give rise to novel effects. If the sign of the refractive index can be turned negative, light impinging on the material is bent in the opposite direction to light that interacts with a naturally occurring material or medium. “So metamaterials could guide rays of visible light around an object, effectively rendering it invisible,” says Langhals.
The Latest Bing News on:
Cloaking devices
- Star Trek: Why Are Romulan and Klingon Starships So Similar?on May 7, 2024 at 1:01 pm
In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, it’s revealed that the Klingons, Romulans, and Federation established a joint colony on Nimbus III in the spirit of “galactic peace" in 2267. It clearly worked out ...
- Star Treks Most Mysterious Bad Guys Just Got a Huge Upgradeon May 7, 2024 at 8:30 am
The Breen's new technology could tip the balance of power in the ongoing war against the Federation in the alternate universe. ...
- Scientists solved the 70-year-old mystery of an insect's invisibility coat that can manipulate lighton April 15, 2024 at 10:12 am
naturally occurring nanoparticles that could one day be used to make invisibility cloaking devices. Invisibility cloaking isn't the only application for synthetic brochosomes. In the next few ...
- Scientists solved the 70-year-old mystery of an insect's invisibility coat that can manipulate lighton April 14, 2024 at 5:00 pm
They hope their brochosomes will one day be used for invisible cloaking devices and other technologies. We tend to think of invisibility cloaks as science fiction. But one group of scientists has ...
- Scientists solved the 70-year-old mystery of an insect's invisibility coat that can manipulate lighton April 14, 2024 at 5:00 pm
They hope their brochosomes will one day be used for invisible cloaking devices and other technologies. We tend to think of invisibility cloaks as science fiction. But one group of scientists has ...
- Cloaking Device: Liu, Joung Launch $100M Nvelop Therapeutics to Advance Delivery of Genetic Cargoon April 8, 2024 at 5:00 pm
A $100-million startup emerging from stealth is developing not one but two answers to the challenge that has long dogged the gene therapy field: How can genetic medicines best be delivered to ...
- Backyard Insect Inspires Invisibility Devices, Next Gen Techon March 19, 2024 at 5:00 pm
This could allow the development of bioinspired optical materials with possible applications ranging from invisible cloaking devices to coatings to more efficiently harvest solar energy, said Tak-Sing ...
- Backyard insect inspires invisibility devices, next gen techon March 18, 2024 at 6:24 am
This could allow the development of bioinspired optical materials with possible applications ranging from invisible cloaking devices to coatings to more efficiently harvest solar energy ...
- The Cloaking Devices Of Star Trek Explainedon July 12, 2023 at 2:12 pm
Starting from a real-world perspective, Star Trek’s cloaking devices were first developed (though not yet named as such) by screenwriter Paul Schneider for the Original Series “Balance of ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Cloaking devices
[google_news title=”” keyword=”cloaking devices” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
The Latest Bing News on:
Invisibility cloak
- Scientists solved the 70-year-old mystery of an insect's invisibility coat that can manipulate lighton May 4, 2024 at 2:51 am
We tend to think of invisibility cloaks as science fiction. But one group of scientists has taken a big step toward making them a reality. For the first time, scientists at Pennsylvania State ...
- MIT Technology Reviewon April 22, 2024 at 4:59 pm
Precancerous colon cells turn on a gene that helps them evade the immune system until they develop into tumors. One of the immune system’s roles is to detect and kill cells that have acquired ...
- Realization of an ideal omnidirectional invisibility cloak in free spaceon April 22, 2024 at 10:00 am
A team led by Prof. Dexin Ye and Prof. Hongsheng Chen from Zhejiang University, and Prof. Yu Luo from Nanyang Technological University conducted research on the practical implementation of ...
- Startup Selling Invisibility Shieldson April 21, 2024 at 5:00 pm
The largest version is a whopping six feet tall, large enough to "hide multiple people standing side by side," per the company's Kickstarter page — and it just might be as close to a Harry ...
- Realization of an ideal omnidirectional cloak in free spaceon April 19, 2024 at 9:49 am
The past decade has witnessed the rapid development of transformation optics, through which various novel optical devices such as invisibility cloaks, electromagnetic illusion devices and ...
- Helping Lone Workers Shed the Invisibility Cloakon April 15, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Many people might wish they had their own invisibility cloaks from time to time. But there is one group of people who would like to get rid of theirs. They are lone workers, whose jobs take them ...
- Scientists solved the 70-year-old mystery of an insect's invisibility coat that can manipulate lighton April 15, 2024 at 10:12 am
We tend to think of invisibility cloaks as science fiction. But one group of scientists has taken a big step toward making them a reality. For the first time, scientists at Pennsylvania State ...
- Scientists solved the 70-year-old mystery of an insect's invisibility coat that can manipulate lighton April 14, 2024 at 5:00 pm
They hope their brochosomes will one day be used for invisible cloaking devices and other technologies. We tend to think of invisibility cloaks as science fiction. But one group of scientists has ...
The Latest Google Headlines on:
Invisibility cloak
[google_news title=”” keyword=”invisibility cloak” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]