Nanotechnology and metamaterials will enable the creation of more powerful tools

Oct 21, 2008 10:27 GMT  ·  By
The new technology could render objects invisible by bending the light around them
   The new technology could render objects invisible by bending the light around them

Uber-fast computers operating 1,000 times the actual speed, 10 times more powerful magnifying microscopes, able to spy on the DNA directly, more efficient solar energy capturing devices, enhanced sensors or invisibility cloaks are only a few of the goals that the new optical science field promises to achieve. If properly comprehended and applied, this larger step in controlling the light may prove to be the modern industrial equivalent of the Steam engine.

 

The transformation optics relies on a successful combination of nanotechnology and metamaterials. Meta means “beyond” in Greek, which would mean that metamaterials are artificially enhanced materials. The transformation optics process is based on adapting light in various ways, according to principles and mathematical equations similar and related to Einstein's theory of relativity, which describes gravity’s space and time bending. Behind the entire concept is a Robert and Anne Burnett Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, Vladimir Shalaev.

 

“Transformation optics is a new way of manipulating and controlling light at all distances, from the macro- to the nanoscale, and it represents a new paradigm for the science of light,” he explains. Modern optical devices are limited by the fact that their components are not smaller than a wavelength of the light they transmit. But Shalaev's metamaterials are smaller than that, thus able to cope with controlling light at any scale. As he says, “The whole idea behind metamaterials is to create materials designed and engineered out of artificial atoms, meta-atoms, which are smaller than the wavelengths of light itself. One of the most exciting applications is an electromagnetic cloak that could bend light around itself, similar to the flow of water around a stone, making invisible both the cloak and an object hidden inside.”

 

This technology would allow computer developing companies to bypass the tough problem of making tinier semiconductors by making use of light in order to process information. Another application, the planar hyperlens, would drastically reduce the light bending (to even less than zero in the case of its refraction index), allowing for much more fine-detail-carrying light to be captured and thus enabling scientists to gaze at objects as tiny as viruses or DNA in unprecedented detail. Such lenses could already be available in about 5 years, Shalaev states.