If you are a Harry Potter fan, then you may have watched Harry using a certain type of robe or blanket that makes him invisible in the Harry Potter movies. Well, it seems to see such type of cloth in reality, but some researchers are actually trying to make it possible with the help of a certain flexible metamaterial. These metamaterials have a lot of potential uses in the future, but among its potential uses, the possible use of this metamaterial into making an invisible cloak is the most popular.
The researchers at the University of St. Andrews are doing some experimental study and created sheets of a flexible metamaterial called Metaflex that apparently have the ability to manipulate visible light. Apparently, Steven Cummer, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Duke University has managed to fabricate the first metamaterial-based invisibility cloak.
These metamaterials have a certain property that allows its researchers to manipulate electromagnetic waves and bent it around an object creating some sort of illusion that it is not actually there. Well, it seems impossible and a little difficult to understand, but this actually gave way to the creation of invisibility cloaks.
However, these metamaterials have certain limitations and must only be constructed out of elements which are relatively smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation that is being manipulated. This only means that these invisibility cloaks only works within a certain wavelengths that is usually longer than those found in visible light such as the radio and microwave frequencies.
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The Metaflex has the ability to interact with different wavelengths of light and has the ability to bend at wavelengths as short as 620nm. In some tests conducted upon the Metaflex, researchers have found out that it can block a portion of an incoming beam of light at specific wavelengths which only proves that these metamaterials are actually working.
This might be a very important discovery made by Science as we see a great potential in this in the near future. The scientists from St. Andrews are confident enough that Metaflex can be produced in larger sizes and at high volumes as well. So we can expect more of this in the very near future.
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