Microscopic invisibility cloak has potential for scalability

The cloak - developed by a team from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley - is said to be microscopic in size but the principles behind the technology should enable it to be scaled-up.

Working with brick-like blocks of gold nanoantennas, the Berkeley researchers fashioned a so-called ’skin cloak’ 80nm thick that was wrapped around a 3D object the size of a few biological cells and arbitrarily shaped with multiple bumps and dents.

According to a statement, the surface of the skin cloak was meta-engineered to reroute reflected light waves so that the object was rendered invisible to optical detection when the cloak is activated.

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