A team of engineers from Iowa State University of Science and Technology has unveiled a new flexible and easily stretchable material called meta-skin. The special properties of this material make it possible to hide the object from radars. In the future, by analogy with him, experts expect to create a real "cloak of the unknown."
Meta-skin got its name by analogy with metamaterials - composite materials that have properties that are not found in nature, and are able to manipulate electromagnetic waves. Meta-skin is made up of polymers in which liquid metal particles are implanted. By stretching and contracting, such a coating can increase or decrease the reflection of electromagnetic signals, according to Phys.org.
As a liquid metal, scientists used an alloy of gallium, indium and tin called galinstan - its melting point is only 19 degrees Celsius, and, moreover, it is much less toxic than, for example, mercury. Galistan is filled with resonators, which are rings with a radius of about 2.5 millimeters. Experiments have shown that at the moment such a design is able to suppress 75 percent of electromagnetic waves at a frequency of 8 to 10 gigahertz. When the object was "wrapped" in meta-skin, radars could not detect it when emitted from any angle, the creators of the technology say.
The researchers hope that their development, among other things, will help to tune electromagnetic frequencies, screen or suppress the scattering of electromagnetic signals - all this is necessary for the development of science and technology. And in the long term, scientists expect to invent an “invisibility cloak: to improve their technology in such a way that it will allow to regulate the intensity of not only magnetic waves, but also visible and infrared light.
An article dedicated to the development of scientists was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Dmitry Istrov