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posted by takyon on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-don't-see-it-working dept.

Pennsylvania State University reports:

An electric current will not only heat a hybrid metamaterial, but will also trigger it to change state and fade into the background like a chameleon in what may be the proof-of-concept of the first controllable metamaterial device, or metadevice, according to a team of engineers.

"Previous metamaterials work focused mainly on cloaking objects so they were invisible in the radio frequency or other specific frequencies," said Douglas H. Werner, John L. and Genevieve H. McCain Chair Professor of electrical engineering, Penn State. "Here we are not trying to make something disappear, but to make it blend in with the background like a chameleon and we are working in optical wavelengths, specifically in the infrared."

The article makes it seem like the blending results from heating the material, not from affecting how surrounding light interacts with the material, but the image shown does blend well.

Hybrid metamaterials for electrically triggered multifunctional control (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13236) (DX)


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:41AM (#420405)

    > Metamaterial Device Allows Chameleon-like Behavior in the Infrared

    So you can walk on walls and the ceiling if you wear it in under a heat-lamp?

    Yeah, I'm looking at you wanker_monkey.

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