St Andrew’s: Advance in development of material for cloaking objects from visible light

Researchers at St Andrew’s University in Scotland have made a practical breakthrough that brings the possibility of flexible smart materials that can manipulate light to shield objects from view one step closer.

Two challenges to the creation of smart flexible materials that can cloak from visible light are making meta-atoms small enough to interact with visible light, and the fabrication of metamaterials that can be detached from the hard surfaces they are developed on, to be used in more flexible constructs.

Research published today (4 November) describes how Meta-flex, the new material designed by the researchers, overcomes both of these problems.

Cloaks have been designed to shield objects from both Terahertz and Near Infrared waves. But making a flexible material that can cloak objects from visible light poses a greater challenge because of visible light’s smaller wavelength and the need to make the metamaterial’s constituent part – meta-atoms – small enough to interact with visible light.

These tiny meta-atoms have been designed but they have only traditionally been realised on flat, hard surfaces, making them rigid constructs, impractical for use in clothing or other possible applications that would benefit from flexibility, such as super lenses.

The research team, led by Andrea Di Falco, has developed a technique which frees the meta-atoms from the hard surface they are constructed on. The researchers predict that stacking them together can create an independent, flexible material, which can be adopted for use in a wide range of applications.

Di Falco says, “Metamaterials give us the ultimate handle on manipulating the behaviour of light. The impact of our new material Meta-flex is ubiquitous. It could be possible to use Meta-flex for creating smart fabrics and we have shown how easy it is to place Meta-flex on disposable contact lenses, showing how flexible superlenses could be used for visual prostheses.”

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