{"id":17421,"date":"2015-09-17T12:47:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-17T19:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/making-3-d-objects-disappear-researchers-create-ultrathin-invisibility-cloak"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:23:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:23:22","slug":"making-3-d-objects-disappear-researchers-create-ultrathin-invisibility-cloak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/09\/making-3-d-objects-disappear-researchers-create-ultrathin-invisibility-cloak","title":{"rendered":"Making 3-D objects disappear: Researchers create ultrathin invisibility cloak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/making-3-d-objects-disappear-researchers-create-ultrathin-invisibility-cloak.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Invisibility cloaks are a staple of science fiction and fantasy, from Star Trek to Harry Potter, but don\u2019t exist in real life, or do they? Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have devised an ultra-thin invisibility \u201cskin\u201d cloak that can conform to the shape of an object and conceal it from detection with visible light. Although this cloak is only microscopic in size, the principles behind the technology should enable it to be scaled-up to conceal macroscopic items as well.<\/p>\n<p>Working with brick-like blocks of gold nanoantennas, the Berkeley researchers fashioned a \u201cskin cloak\u201d barely 80 nanometers in thickness, that was wrapped around a three-dimensional object about the size of a few biological cells and arbitrarily shaped with multiple bumps and dents. The surface of the skin cloak was meta-engineered to reroute reflected <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/light\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"textTag\">light<\/a> waves so that the object was rendered invisible to optical detection when the cloak is activated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first time a 3D object of arbitrary shape has been cloaked from <a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/visible+light\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"textTag\">visible light<\/a>,\u201d said Xiang Zhang, director of Berkeley Lab\u2019s Materials <i>Science<\/i>s Division and a world authority on metamaterials \u2014 artificial nanostructures engineered with electromagnetic properties not found in nature. \u201cOur ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat. It is easy to design and implement, and is potentially scalable for hiding macroscopic objects.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2015-09-d-ultrathin-invisibility-cloak.html\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Invisibility cloaks are a staple of science fiction and fantasy, from Star Trek to Harry Potter, but don\u2019t exist in real life, or do they? Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)\u2019s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have devised an ultra-thin invisibility \u201cskin\u201d cloak that can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1635,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-materials","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17421"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69542,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17421\/revisions\/69542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}