Scientists make invisibility cloaks with silk material

According to the British "Daily Telegraph" report, recently scientists have made use of silk to make a stealth cloak, although the current stealth cloak only works in the spectral range between radio waves and infrared rays other than visible light, but its research and development People, scientists at Boston University and Tufts University believe that through their improvement, they may make it work in a shorter light range, even including visible light.

The researchers hope that this material will not only have medical application value, but also make it possible for humans or objects to be hidden. This "supermaterial" is made of silk covered with a layer of metallic material. Each tiny spiral is a "slit ring resonator." Snap ring resonators have a unique effect on light: they can absorb or reflect light in a specific wavelength range, or bend the light, causing them to bypass the surface of the object. There are 10,000 open-ring resonators per square centimeter of silk metamaterial.

In general, terahertz waves can pass through silk without affecting it. But when the terahertz wave touches this new type of metallic silk, the latter will generate resonance. Since silk is biocompatible, it does not cause immune repulsion after being implanted in the human body, so this metal silk can be widely applied to the medical field. “For metamaterials, this is a unique perspective because silk has the ability to be compatible with the human body,” said Fiorenten Omenetto, a researcher at Tufts University.

Researchers say that using this material to make a Harry Potter-type invisibility cloak is just one of the aspects, and applying it to the medical field can only bring its greatest value. Radiation researchers can cover organs with this material to better see where the organs are blocked. Diabetic patients can also use it as a blood glucose sensor: When the blood sugar level changes, this metamaterial will also change accordingly. This change can be transmitted in the form of radio waves, and it can be discovered using a mobile phone.

Last year, researchers from the Royal College of London and the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom received 4.9 million pounds (51.838 million yuan) in funding and were granted permission to use this metamaterial and their applications in the fields of medicine, defense, security and communications. research.