Metamaterials

Nissan has demonstrated a new automotive paint that can drastically cool a vehicle parked in direct sunshine. Tests have shown that treated cars stay up to 21.6 °F (12 °C) cooler than untreated cars parked side by side.

Lots of glass surfaces can brighten up a room, but it also lets in too much heat as well as neighbors’ prying eyes. A new metamaterial is not only more transparent to light, but adds privacy, cools the room inside, and automatically cleans itself.

Harvard engineers have created a strange new “metafluid” – a liquid that can be programmed to change properties, like its compressibility, transparency, viscosity and even whether it’s Newtonian or not.

A new type of 3D-printed lattice structure has surprised researchers with its strength and light weight. It uses two different lattice structures merged together to eliminate the weak points normally found in these complex shapes.

Lighter colors are cooler than darker ones, which can limit the practical palette choices for your clothes, car or house. A new material, inspired by butterfly wings, can produce vibrant colors while reflecting 100% of light to keep them cooler.

A team of researchers led by NASA and MIT has come up with radical new wing design that is not only much lighter than conventional wings, but also has the potential to automatically reconfigure itself to meet the flight conditions of the moment.

In our increasingly noisy world, it can be hard to find some quiet time. Now, a team of mechanical engineers at Boston University has developed a new device that is specially designed to block up to 94 percent of incoming sound waves, while still letting air pass through.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have developed SoundBender, a technology that bends sound waves around obstacles to acoustically levitate objects above them.

Metamaterials that cloak people and objects from radar, visible light or infrared are usually thick and heavy, but now engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed an ultrathin, lightweight sheet that absorbs heat signatures and can even present false ones.

Researchers have developed a new technique to make metamaterials with nanoscale structures that can be tuned with strange optical properties. Using DNA-modified gold nanoparticles, the team could change the material's color, opening the door for new sensors or cloaking devices.

​Researchers have invented a material that can bend, shape and focus sounds that pass through it, creating new possibilities for medical imaging, personal audio and other acoustic devices. The precisely engineered surface is a metamaterial, a new class of materials that seem to do the impossible.

Rubber and steel are at different ends of the spectrum of hardness, and wherever an object falls on that scale is typically where it will stay. But now, researchers have developed a metamaterial that can change the stiffness of its surface, from hard to soft and back.