Hiding In the Microwave

No longer just theory or on the set of Star Trek, researchers have created the first cloaking device to demonstrate the principle of hiding an object from electromagnetic radiation. D. Shurig and colleagues used metamaterials engineered composites whose electromagnetic properties can be tuned by design by manipulating their nanostructure to create a space where electromagnetic radiation would be excluded and steered around as if it were not there. The researchers created the cloaking mechanism by hiding a copper cylinder inside a cloak constructed of artificially structured metamaterials designed to operate over a band of microwave frequencies. The cloak decreases scattering from the hidden object while reducing its shadow so that the cloak and object begin to resemble free space. The cloak is imperfect and only two dimensional, but the cloak reduces both back scatter (reflection) and forward scatter (shadow).


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