INVISIBILITY AND METAMATERIAL:-A
Technology of Human Future
Dhirendra Mishra Ankit vimal jain
Poornima Institute of Engg. And Technolgy, Jaipur
ABSTRACT
“Invisiblity” has not remained a thing of
science fiction movie or story. Imagine when
one will be able to disappear in the air and
no one is able to see him like the Harry
Potter invisibility Cloak. Scientist has
discovered the devices which are able to
bend the light around three dimensional
objects making them to “disappear”. The
materials used for the invisibility devices are
artificially designed and research are being
carried out since than the idea strike the
mind of thinkers of invisibility. The
breakthrough could lead to systems for
rendering anything from people to large
objects, such as tanks and ships, invisible to
the eye – although this is still years off. The
day is not for away when we have
invisibility cloak large enough to hide us.
1. INTRODUCTION
The things which our eyes are not able to
see are considered as “ Invisible”. Light is
neither absorbed nor reflected by the objects,
passing like water flowing around a rock. As
a result, only the light from behind the
objects can be seen. The devices which are
going to make us hide are invisibility
devices. Researchers at the University of
California at Berkeley, whose work is
funded by the American military, have
engineered materials that can control
light’s direction of travel. The world’s two
leading scientific journals, Science and
Nature, are expected to report the results in
near future. . The concept of invisibility
would involve surrounding the object by a
"metamaterial" . Meta-material is a type of
composite material that has unusual
electromagnetic properties. According to the
researchers, light rays incident on the
material would be bent around the object,
only to emerge on the other side in exactly
the same direction as they began. Although
the work is only theoretical, the researchers
reckon that materials invisible to radio
waves could be produced within five years.
2. META-MATERIAL
The new "meta-materials," whose physical
structure bends visible light in a way that
ordinary materials don't, may help efforts to
make an invisibility cloak that could guide
light around an object so that neither a
reflection nor a shadow would be created.
Researchers have developed meta-materials
that show these unusual light-bending
abilities for other parts of the
electromagnetic spectrum, notably for
microwaves, but efforts to do this with
visible light have been limited to flat, two-
dimensional systems because the shorter the
wavelength, as in visible light, the smaller
the features of the man made metamaterial.

Figure 1. Bending of light in meta-
material
There are some scientific catches that the
tale-tellers never had to worry about:
• For a total invisibility effect, the
waves passing closest to the cloaked
object would have to be bent in such
a way that they would appear to
exceed relativity's light speed limit.
Fortunately, there's a loophole in
Albert Einstein's rules of the road
that allows smooth pulses of light to
undergo just such a phase shift.
• The invisibility effect would work
only for a specific range of
wavelengths. "There is a price to be
paid if you want a thin cloak, in that
it operates only over a narrow range
of frequencies," Pendry said.
• The cloak could be made to cover a
volume of any shape, but "you can't
flap your cloak," Pendry said.
Moving the material around would
spoil the effect.
• The tiny structures embedded in the
metamaterial would have to be
smaller than the wavelength of the
electromagnetic rays you wanted to
bend. That's a tall order for optical
invisibility, because the structures
would have to be on the scale of
nanometers, or billionths of a meter.
It's far easier to create radar
invisibility, Pendry said: "You're
talking millimeters" — that is,
thousandths of a meter.
3.RESEARCH WORKS IN
FIELD OF INVISIBILITY
3.1 Xiang Zhang
Xiang Zhang the leader of the
researchers, said: “In the case of
invisibility cloaks or shields, the material
would need to curve light waves
completely around the object like a river
flowing around a rock.”
Figure 2. Meta-material
An observer looking at the cloaked
object would then see light from behind
it – making it seem to disappear.
Substances capable of achieving such
feats are known as “meta-materials” and
have the power to “grab”
electromagnetic radiation and deflect it
smoothly. No such material occurs
naturally and it is only in the past few
years that nano-scale engineering,
manipulating matter at the level of atoms
and molecules, has advanced sufficiently
to give scientists the chance to create
them. The tiny scale at which such
researchers must operate is astonishing
in itself. Zhang’s researchers had to
construct a material whose elements
were engineered to within about
0.00000066 of a meter. The military
funding that Zhang has won for his
research shows what kind of applications
it might be used for, ushering in a new
age of stealth technology.
3.2 Researchers at the University of
California
Researchers at the University of
California at Berkeley, whose work is
funded by the American military, have
engineered materials that can control
light’s direction of travel. The world’s
two leading scientific journals, Science
and Nature, are expected to report the
results in near future.
3.3 Imperial College London
It follows earlier work at Imperial
College London that achieved similar
results with microwaves. Like light,
these are a form of electromagnetic
radiation but their longer wave-length
makes them far easier to manipulate.
Achieving the same effect with visible
light is a big advance.
4. Cloak and shadow
4.1Professor Ortwin Hess
Advanced Technology Institute at
the University of Surrey.
This is a huge step forward, a
tremendous achievement. It's a careful
choice of the right materials and the right
structuring to get this effect for the first
time at these wavelengths.There could be
more immediate applications for the
devices in telecommunications. What's
more, they could be used to make better
microscopes, allowing images of far
smaller objects than conventional
microscopes can see. And a genuine
cloaking effect isn't far around the
corner. "In order to have the 'Harry
Potter' effect, you just need to find the
right materials for the visible
wavelengths," says Prof Hess, "and it's
absolutely thrilling to see we're on the
right track."
5. APPLICATIONS AND
FUTURE PROSPECTS:
• There'd be plenty of applications
in the civilian world as well ,
even for rudimentary cloaking
devices. For example, you could
create receptacles to shield
sensitive medical devices from
disruption by MRI scanners, or
build cloaks to route cellphone
signals around obstacles.
• Pendry's team proposed
constructing all-over cloaking
devices, the other research paper
describes a simpler method that
would involve shaping the meta-
materials into cylindrical
cloaking devices. The method
could also work to block sound
waves — like the cone of silence
on the "Get Smart" TV show, but
not as impractical.
6. Barrier in development of • Researchers at the University of
Invisibility devices: California Imperial College
London
• Although we have thorough
knowledge of theoretical • www.Physicsworld.com
concept of invisibility but • www.Sciencedaily.com
we have not eough practical
implementation of these • Science Reporter,april,2005
concepts.
• Meta-material still needs
more consideration and a lot
has remained undiscovered
and needs thorough study.
• Security concern is another
serious issue.
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The paper is result of support, motivation
and guidance of Mr. Manoj Gupta, Vice
Principal, Poornima Institute of Engg.
And Technolgy, Jaipur , Mr Hari singh
Parihar, Mr Gourav Sharma, Mrs Gitika
Bhati, HOD, Electronics and Comm., ,
Mr. S.K Bairwa and my friends and
family..

8. REFERENCES
• Electronics for You, April,
2007Business week, August 5,
1996.

• The New York times magazine,

June, 2000.
• Researchers from Duke
University, USA

• Researchers from mperial

College London Findings of
Xiang Zhang