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posted by martyb on Monday January 10 2022, @07:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the spherical-cow[l]? dept.

"Invisibility Cloaks" May Soon Be Real: Creating Invisibility With Superconducting Materials:

Invisibility devices may soon no longer be the stuff of science fiction. A new study published in the De Gruyter journal Nanophotonics by lead authors Huanyang Chen at Xiamen University, China, and Qiaoliang Bao, suggests the use of the material Molybdenum Trioxide (a-MoO3) to replace expensive and difficult to produce metamaterials in the emerging technology of novel optical devices.

The idea of an invisibility cloak may sound more like magic than science, but researchers are currently hard at work producing devices that can scatter and bend light in such a way that it creates the effect of invisibility.

Thus far these devices have relied on metamaterials – a material that has been specially engineered to possess novel properties not found in naturally occurring substances or in the individual particles of that material – but the study by Chen and co-authors suggests the use of a-MoO3 to create these invisibility devices.

Possessing some unique properties, this material can provide an excellent platform for controlling energy flow.

[...] As a result, the study shows that hyperbolic materials such as a-MoO3 and Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) could serve as a new basis for transformation optics, opening the possibility of photonic devices beyond invisibility concentrators, including improved infrared imaging and detection systems.

Journal Reference:
Tao Hou, Sicen Tao, Haoran Mu, et al. Invisibility concentrator based on van der Waals semiconductor α-MoO3 [open], Nanophotonics (DOI: 10.1515/nanoph-2021-0557)


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday January 10 2022, @08:45AM (2 children)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Monday January 10 2022, @08:45AM (#1211460)

    So invisible to the naked eye or invisible to cameras or invisible to heat sensors etc?

    My superpower is, if I stand very still without making any noise, I'm invisible to blind people.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday January 10 2022, @11:38AM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday January 10 2022, @11:38AM (#1211474) Journal

    I've got an even better superpower: I'm invisible to people with normal sight in bright light, as long as something intransparent is between me and them. For example, I can tell you for certain that no one can see me right now (unless there's a camera somewhere recording me without my knowledge, of course).

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday January 12 2022, @11:26PM

      by acid andy (1683) on Wednesday January 12 2022, @11:26PM (#1212241) Homepage Journal

      I can tell you for certain that no one can see me right now (unless there's a camera somewhere recording me without my knowledge, of course).

      Can you see your hands or arms, part of your nose or eyelids? If so, someone can see you.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?