Visible-Light Cloaking Device

Filed in archive Materials on October 6, 2007

In the past, nanostructured materials have been used to create an invisibility cloak that works in the microwave portion of the spectrum. Now, for the first time, team led by Igor Smolyaninov at the university of maryland has used surface plasmonics and nanostructured materials to make an invisibility cloak that works in the visible light range - but only at a scale of microns, and in only two dimensions - for now.

My opinion is that this is an amazing advance. Along with the plastic as strong as steel, this really shows that nanostructured materials are making serious progress. It's just a matter of time before these are integrated into consumer products with properties that seem almost "magical" from the viewpoint of present-day consumers.