http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Computer chips that use light to move data would be much more energy efficient and possibly even faster than today’s chips, which use electricity. One of the difficulties in realizing them, however, is that light moving through a “waveguide” — unlike electrons moving through a wire — can reflect backward, interfering with subsequent transmissions and even disrupting the operation of the laser that emitted it. http://phys.org/news263443402.html Physics Mon, 06 Aug 2012 03:43:42 EST news263443402 Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have demonstrated a drastically new way of achieving negative refraction in a metamaterial. The advance, reported in the Aug. 2 issue of Nature, results in an "extraordinarily strong" negative refractive index as large as -700, more than a hundred times larger than most previously reported. http://phys.org/news263040084.html Physics Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:00:19 EST news263040084 (Phys.org) -- The world’s smallest three-dimensional optical cavities with the potential to generate the world’s most intense nanolaser beams have been created by a scientific team led by researchers with the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. In addition to nanolasers, these unique optical cavities with their extraordinary electromagnetic properties should be applicable to a broad range of other technologies, including LEDs, optical sensing, nonlinear optics, quantum optics and photonic integrated circuits. http://phys.org/news259986844.html Physics Wed, 27 Jun 2012 03:34:21 EST news259986844 A novel approach to designing artificial materials could enable magnetic devices with a wider range of properties than those now available. An international team of researchers have now extended the properties and potential uses of metamaterials by using not one but two very different classes of nanostructures, or metamolecules. http://phys.org/news257068663.html Nanotechnology Thu, 24 May 2012 09:10:12 EST news257068663 (Phys.org) -- In the real world of so called “normal” materials, people expect certain things to occur as a result of certain actions. Covering an object with a cloak for example, should hide the object, but the cloak should still be visible (or vice-versa), or if you push or sit on a couch cushion, it should contract. Lately though, new science has been changing our perception of how materials should behave. For example, recent research into metamaterials; materials that aren’t normally found in nature, has been turning some of what we see as normal, on its head. The development of cloaking devices that hide objects and are themselves invisible, is one example. http://phys.org/news256972609.html Physics Wed, 23 May 2012 06:17:07 EST news256972609 (Phys.org) -- Finding new connections between different disciplines leads to new – and sometimes useful – ideas. That’s exactly what happened when scientists in the Department of Physics, Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), in collaboration with City College of CUNY, Purdue University and University of Alberta, leveraged mathematical topology to create an artificially nanostructured anisotropic (exhibiting properties with different values when measured along axes in different directions) metamaterial that can be switched from a non-conductive dielectric state to a medium that behaves like metal in one direction and like a dielectric another. The metamaterial’s optical properties was mapped onto a topological transformation of an ellipsoidal surface into an hyperboloid – and transitioning from one to the other dramatically increases the photon density, resulting in dramatic increase in the light intensity inside the material. The researchers state that by allowing topologically-based manipulation of light-matter interactions, these types of metamaterials could lead to a wide range of photonic applications in solar cells, light emitting diodes, displays, and quantum computing and communications. http://phys.org/news254766287.html Physics Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:30:01 EST news254766287 (Phys.org) -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have designed a method to evaluate different conductors for use in metamaterial structures, which are engineered to exhibit properties not possible in natural materials. The work was reported this month in Nature Photonics. http://phys.org/news254474472.html Physics Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:10:01 EST news254474472 The ability to control the flow of electrons using engineered materials is fundamental to the information technology revolution, yet many properties of matter are still unclear. Now a University of Alberta researcher is closer to understanding some of the exotic electronic properties in matter using optical analogues. http://phys.org/news253601086.html Physics Sat, 14 Apr 2012 05:45:04 EST news253601086 Helping bridge the gap between photonics and electronics, researchers from Purdue University have coaxed a thin film of titanium nitride into transporting plasmons, tiny electron excitations coupled to light that can direct and manipulate optical signals on the nanoscale. Titanium nitride's addition to the short list of surface-plasmon-supporting materials, formerly comprised only of metals, could point the way to a new class of optoelectronic devices with unprecedented speed and efficiency. http://phys.org/news252072766.html Physics Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:13:07 EST news252072766 Duke University engineers believe that continued advances in creating ever-more exotic and sophisticated man-made materials will greatly improve their ability to control light at will. http://phys.org/news251297369.html Physics Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:00:34 EST news251297369 Scientists calculate that a "perfect lens," a slab of artificial material engineered to focus electromagnetic fields in ways that natural materials can't, may increase the efficiency of some wireless power transfer systems. http://phys.org/news250850195.html Physics Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:36:40 EST news250850195 Metamaterials are a new class of artificial substances with properties unlike anything found in the natural world. Some have been designed to act as invisibility cloaks; others as superlenses, antenna systems or highly sensitive detectors. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found a way to use metamaterials to absorb a wide range of light with extremely high efficiency, which they say could lead to a new generation of solar cells or optical sensors. http://phys.org/news250497680.html Physics Fri, 09 Mar 2012 07:20:01 EST news250497680 Researchers in applied physics have cleared an important hurdle in the development of advanced materials, called metamaterials, that bend light in unusual ways. http://phys.org/news250426284.html Nanotechnology Thu, 08 Mar 2012 10:51:58 EST news250426284 A superlens would let you see a virus in a drop of blood and open the door to better and cheaper electronics. It might, says Durdu Guney, make ultra-high-resolution microscopes as commonplace as cameras in our cell phones. http://phys.org/news245306714.html Physics Mon, 09 Jan 2012 04:45:46 EST news245306714 Progress of metamaterials in nanotechnologies has made the invisibility cloak, a subject of mythology and science fiction, become reality: Light waves can be guided around an object to be hidden, in such a way that this object appears to be non-existent. http://phys.org/news243596628.html Physics Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:44:13 EST news243596628 (PhysOrg.com) -- The merging of two technologies under development - plasmonics and nanophotonics - is promising the emergence of new "quantum information systems" far more powerful than today's computers. http://phys.org/news238953837.html Physics Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:04:13 EST news238953837 (PhysOrg.com) -- If typical black paint absorbs about 85% of incoming light, then a newly designed metamaterial that absorbs up to 99% of incoming light may be considered “darker than black." By taking advantage of the unique light-scattering properties of metamaterials, researchers have discovered that a hyperbolic metamaterial with a corrugated surface can have a very low reflectance, which could make it promising for high-efficiency solar cells, photodetectors, and radar stealth technology. http://phys.org/news236580751.html Physics Fri, 30 Sep 2011 06:30:01 EST news236580751 (PhysOrg.com) -- A nanoscale game of "now you see it, now you don't" may contribute to the creation of metamaterials with useful optical properties that can be actively controlled, according to scientists at Rice University. http://phys.org/news236533850.html Nanotechnology Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:51:10 EST news236533850 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have tried this with sophisticated meta-materials, but at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) it has now been done with simple metals; materials with a negative refractive index bend light the "wrong" way. http://phys.org/news232871400.html Physics Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:30:37 EST news232871400 Physicists from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) have demonstrated a new technique to control the speed and direction of light using memory metamaterials whose properties can be repeatedly changed. http://phys.org/news232626997.html Physics Mon, 15 Aug 2011 11:36:47 EST news232626997 Taking their cue from biological circulatory systems, University of Illinois researchers have developed vascularized structural composites, creating materials that are lightweight and strong with potential for self-healing, self-cooling, metamaterials and more. http://phys.org/news230899583.html Chemistry Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:46:52 EST news230899583 (PhysOrg.com) -- Metamaterials researchers Yaroslav Urzhumov and David Smith, working at Duke University have built a simulation of an object that can move through water without leaving a trace and claim it's a concept that could be built and used in the real world provided more research is done. In their paper, published on arXiv, the two describe how they programmed the use of metamaterials applied to an object, along with tiny water pumps, into a model to simulate an actual object moving through water without dragging some of the water with it that would normally cause turbulence. http://phys.org/news230809975.html Physics Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:53:04 EST news230809975 In an advance that could open new avenues for solar cells, lasers, metamaterials and more, researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated the first optoelectronically active 3-D photonic crystal. http://phys.org/news230729681.html Chemistry Sun, 24 Jul 2011 13:00:01 EST news230729681 A designer metamaterial has shown it can engineer emitted "blackbody" radiation with an efficiency beyond the natural limits imposed by the material's temperature, a team of researchers led by Boston College physicist Willie Padilla report in the current edition of Physical Review Letters. http://phys.org/news230565911.html Physics Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:08:15 EST news230565911 (PhysOrg.com) -- In an announcement many have been waiting for, a research team from the University of Illinois, has succeeded in figuring out how to produce metamaterials in a size big enough to be useful. The team, led by John Rogers, professor of materials engineering, describe in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, how they used a printing technique to stamp 3-D negative index metamaterials (NIMs) onto plastic or glass. The process could lead to the development of products such as extremely high resolution lenses; or as some hope, an invisibility cloak. http://phys.org/news227352321.html Nanotechnology Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:00:01 EST news227352321 (PhysOrg.com) -- Most of the invisibility cloaks that have been demonstrated to date conceal objects at frequencies that are not detectable by the human eye. Designing invisibility cloaks that can conceal objects from visible light has been more challenging due to the strict material requirements. But in a new study, researchers have fabricated a carpet cloak that can make objects undetectable in the full visible spectrum. http://phys.org/news227333386.html Physics Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:40:04 EST news227333386 Two University of Pennsylvania engineers have proposed the possibility of two-dimensional metamaterials. These one-atom-thick metamaterials could be achieved by controlling the conductivity of sheets of graphene, which is a single layer of carbon atoms. http://phys.org/news226846300.html Nanotechnology Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:00:08 EST news226846300 (PhysOrg.com) -- Like an opera singer hitting a note that shatters a glass, a signal at a particular resonant frequency can concentrate energy in a material and change its properties. And as with 18th century "musical glasses," adding a little water can change the critical pitch. Echoing both phenomena, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a unique fluid-tuned "metasurface," a concept that may be useful in biomedical sensors and microwave-assisted chemistry. http://phys.org/news226746695.html Physics Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:13:00 EST news226746695 (PhysOrg.com) -- By controlling how light bends around an object, researchers have built a shrinking device that makes objects appear smaller than they actually are. Although the original object does not actually shrink, the illusion of the smaller object is convincing enough to confuse viewers since the real size of the object cannot be perceived. http://phys.org/news226037386.html Physics Tue, 31 May 2011 06:10:02 EST news226037386 Electrical engineers at Duke University have determined that unique man-made materials should theoretically make it possible to improve the power transfer to small devices, such as laptops or cell phones, or ultimately to larger ones, such as cars or elevators, without wires. http://phys.org/news225368367.html Physics Mon, 23 May 2011 11:19:48 EST news225368367