Metamaterials

Although solar-powered devices are now fairly common, Swedish scientists have created something a little different. They've built tiny "metavehicles" that are mechanically propelled and guided via waves of light.

Though you can make objects smarter by adding sensors to them, a team of MIT engineers has managed to 3D print metamaterial structures with electrodes directly integrated into them to allow objects to sense user interaction.

Most conventional light microscopes have a resolution of 200 nanometers – this means that imaged objects which are any closer together won't be seen as separate items. A new high-tech microscope slide, however, boosts that figure to 40 nanometers.

Ultra wide-angle fisheye lenses are typically thick, bulbous contraptions, that can't easily be incorporated into devices such as smartphones. That could be about to change, though, as engineers have now created one that's completely flat.

Imagine talking to someone across a crowd of thousands without using a phone, or sitting way up the back at a concert, but hearing everything perfectly. This is the promise of acoustic lenses, and researchers at the universities of Sussex and Bristol in the UK think they’ve something to shout about.

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.