SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

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 [sciencedaily.com] 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.

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