Broadband electromagnetic cloaking with smart metamaterials

A metamaterial invisibility cloak that can adapt to hide different sized objects is demonstrated in Nature Communications ("Broadband electromagnetic cloaking with smart metamaterials") this week. The findings represent a useful advance for more practical applications of metamaterial cloaking. Metamaterials have already been shown to hide objects from electromagnetic waves by manipulating the light so that it appears to have not interacted with anything. However, these cloaks need to be redesigned and rebuilt if the shape of the object changes.

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The ability to render objects invisible with a cloak that fits all objects and sizes is a long-standing goal for optical devices. Invisibility devices demonstrated so far typically comprise a rigid structure wrapped around an object to which it is fitted. Here we demonstrate smart metamaterial cloaking, wherein the metamaterial device not only transforms electromagnetic fields to make an object invisible, but also acquires its properties automatically from its own elastic deformation.

It is only a matter of time before invisibility cloaks will be developed that operate in optical frequencies and are big enough to cover human sized objects and larger. Renderiing an object invisible to optical, radar, and thermal detection would obviously be a miltary dream come true. To read more, click here.