Material designed to render objects invisible

Scientists have created the first material to render an object invisible in three dimensions using light of wavelengths close to those that are visible to humans. The device is described in the journal Science.
It is built of a polymer frame made of 100 by 200 micron-large blocks. It allows rendering an object slightly less than 1.5 micron lying on a flat surface completely invisible.

Previous devices have been able to hide objects from light travelling in only one direction; viewed from any other angle, the object would remain visible. The new “Invisibility cloak” allows hiding an object in 3-D when viewed from 0 to 60-degree angles.

The invention became possible due to recent discovery of a new type of composite materials whose properties are determined not so much by their formula but by the internal geometry instead. Such materials – called metamaterials – allowed achieving such characteristics that don’t exist in nature, e.g. negative dielectric, magnetic conductivity of the environment.
One of the major challenges that remains in the design of the cloaking device invented by Tolga Ergin, a scientist from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany is hiding objects from wavelengths of light that are visible to humans. To do so, its structure would require polymer fragments as small as 10 nanometres.

Members of the scientific community, however, believe that the demonstrated device is a very significant step towards true invisibility materials suit for practical application.

Source: nauka21vek