The Global Futurist Blog

Invisibility Cloaks for Smart Materials Anyone?

Invisibility Cloaks for Smart Materials Anyone?

The quest for smart materials that can render the wearer invisible has been a holy grail for physics. Arcane reports and pseudo-science have unconfirmed reports tracking invisibility for many generations. Now with advances in nanoscience, basically a material science revolution, smart materials that can "bend light" and re-frame perception of the viewer may be a step closer to reality. Why is this important? My forecast reveals this is not so much about making things invisible. It  shows that we are entering a new era of smart materials that can be designed for making fundamental new sources of energy, eating pollution, crafting fantastically smart computers and making new pharmaceuticals for disease management. 

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, say they have created materials that bring them closer to creating invisibility cloaks. Look for their research in two journals, Nature and Science. The researchers used 3-D metamaterials, or composites with the ability to bend electromagnetic waves, to negatively refract light. InfoWeek reported, "What we have done is take two very different approaches to the challenge of creating bulk metamaterials that can exhibit negative refraction in optical frequencies." Xiang Zhang, professor at Berkeley's Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center, said in a statement, "Both bring us a major step closer to the development of practical applications for metamaterials." 

This is big breakthrough. The Berkeley researchers stacked layers of silver and nonconducting magnesium fluoride and cut nanoscale-sized fishnet patterns into them for the metamaterials. They measured a negative index of refraction at wavelengths as short as 1,500 nanometers. We will reduce this with nano-computers within the next five years, this futurist forecasts.