Nano resonator 'makes objects super visible'

The team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe their advance could have implications for everything from photography to solar power.

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Zongfu Yu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his collaborators describe a nanoscale device that drastically surpasses previous technology in its ability to scatter light. They showed how a single nanoresonator can manipulate light to cast a very large reflection.

The nanoresonator’s capacity to absorb and emit light energy is such that it can make itself – and, in applications, other very small things – appear 10,000 times as large as its physical size.

“Making an object look 10,000 times larger than its physical size has lots of implications in technologies related to light,” Yu said in a statement.

The researchers realised the advance through materials innovation and a keen understanding of the physics of light, which can amplify itself as the surrounding environment manipulates the physical properties of its wave energy. The researchers are said to have taken advantage of this by creating an artificial material in which the wavelength of light is much larger than in a vacuum, which allows light waves to resonate more powerfully.