Researchers Create New Ultra-thin Invisibility Cloak

In Harry Potter, the invisibility cloak used is a pretty nifty little piece of garment. However the fact that it looks like a rug and needs to be held together does limit some of its use, but then again it is just a movie. However in real life, researchers from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley might have come up with a new ultra-thin invisibility cloak that could potentially be worn like a garment.

According to Xiang Zhang, director of the Berkeley National Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, “This is the first time a 3D object of arbitrary shape has been cloaked from visible light. Our ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat. It is easy to design and implement, and is potentially scalable for hiding macroscopic objects.”

This is thanks to the cloak being made with blocks of gold nanoantennas and meta-engineered that routes light waves in a way that renders it invisible when activated. Now before you get too excited, the stage of development right now is microscopic. At technology so far has managed to successfully conceal objects the size of biological cells, but the researchers claim that the technology should be easier to scale up compared to previous invisibility cloaks.

That being said, this isn’t the first invisibility cloak we have seen. Earlier this year new invisible-like technology was created in which it would be able to hide objects that could fit into a 1-inch diameter. A couple of years ago, researchers also attempted to create a super thin invisibility cloak measuring 0.15mm in thickness.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Science