Silk 'Invisibility Cloak' Could Lead to Better Biocompatible Metamaterials
Silky Invisibility You can get a silk invisibility cloak in any color you want as long as it's invisible. mckaysavage via Flickr To think Marco Polo didn't even know what he had. Silk and gold, considered luxury items for as long as mankind has enjoyed shiny things, might now lead the way forward in the growing field of metamaterials. Turning flashy into inconspicuous, scientists from Tufts and Boston University have created an invisibility cloak from silk coated with gold. But keep your Harry Potter-like aspirations in check; this invisibility material only works in the terahertz range, a long wavelength region between radio and IR. The researchers think it could work at smaller wavelengths, including those in the visible spectrum, but that's not even their focus right now. Far more promising are the implications in biomedicine, as silk is a biocompatible material. Metamaterials are a unique category of materials that derive their optical properties...