The Berkeley Lab announced the invention of an ultrathin invisibility cloak last Thursday, a moment that Harry Potter fans have likely dreamt of for years. The one drawback is that it currently only applies to microscopic objects.
Scientists at the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have created a metasurface skin cloak made from an ultrathin layer of nanoatennas (also known as gold blocks) which are capable of covering an arbitrarily shaped object.
“This is the first time a 3D object of arbitrary shape has been cloaked from visible light,” said Xiang Zhang, director of Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division.
According to NBC, previous attempts to design an invisibility cloak by scientists would only work if the object was viewed from very specific angles. As soon as the viewers perspective changed or rotated, the object would be visible again.
The new technology manages to overcome this challenge. “A phase shift provided by each individual nanoantenna fully restores both the wavefront and the phase of the scattered light so that the object remains perfectly hidden,” said Zi Jing Wong, a member of Zhang’s research group.
The material of the tiny invisibility cloak is flexible and capable of being tuned to match its surrounding environment, reported NBC.
“Our ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat. It is easy to design and implement, and is potentially scalable for hiding macroscopic objects,” said Zhang. This suggests that the cloak may eventually be capable of covering larger objects, with practical uses in everyday life.
See a video of the new technology applied on a microscopic object below.
