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Bending Light the Wrong Way Saturday, January 05, 2008 - Roni Barr Home >> News >> General Technology   
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A Princeton University research team has recently created an easy-to-produce material that has the rare ability to bend light in the opposite direction from all naturally occurring materials. This new substance belongs to the relatively new class of materials called "metamaterials", which are made of traditional substances such as metals or semiconductors, arranged in very small alternating patterns that modify their collective properties. The new material may contribute to significant advances in many fields, including high-speed communications, medical diagnostics, and detection of terrorist threats.
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While previous metamaterials consisted of two-dimensional arrangements of metals, the Princeton invention is the first three-dimensional metamaterial constructed entirely from semiconductors, the principal ingredient of microchips. According to Claire Gmachl, Princeton Electrical Engineering Professor and one of the researchers in the study, three-dimensional metamaterials are more useful in a variety of devices.
This development holds promise for the development of superior lenses. Positive refraction indices of normal materials necessitate the use of curved lenses, inherently distorting some of the light that passes through them in devices like telescopes and microscopes. Flat lenses made from materials that exhibit negative refraction could compensate for this aberration and enable far more powerful microscopes that can “see” things as small as molecules of DNA. Furthermore, the Princeton metamaterial is capable of negative refraction of light in the mid-infrared region, which is used in a wide range of sensing and communications applications. Its unique composition results in less lost light than previous metamaterials, and since the semiconductors are grown from crystals using common manufacturing techniques, it is less complex, more reliable, and easier to produce. This may enable more compact mid-infrared optics and the team plans to incorporate the new metamaterials into lasers. Additionally, the researchers will continue to modify the material to make its features even smaller, in an attempt to expand the range of light wavelengths they are able to manipulate. TFOT recently covered the Zigview S2 Digital Viewfinder- the world’s first digital angle viewfinder for digital and film SLR cameras, a new 3D holographic video system, and a new nanoscale technology for memory storage. More about the new metamaterials can be found on the Princeton University website. |
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If I were a researcher I'd make sure everything I do could be used for “detection of terrorist threats”. That's how to get money. |
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| And indeed, a lot of researchers do just that. | |||
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Even as I read this uplifting report on the advances of Science in America, my spirit is dampened by the despicable acts of the very capitalism from which these great feats are borne. The backwards move of GM when killing the EV1 - an electric car that worked, for example, and the burying of the batteries methodologies by Chevron/Mobile in a me lee of shysterized patent clown-shit as only an American Capitalist firm can do show that for every step forward in this system, we take many backwards. The new and fascinating Chinese fact in the Scientific world may go beyond the unregulated shyster powered vulture capitalist's only reason for being, the ROI and into a mere peaceful era for mankind, where Science serves the common folk, not the upper echelon only. |
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For high quality precision machined parts check out www.kineticmachining.com Have a great one! |
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