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AMES, Iowa Advancements in fabrication technologies may lead to superlenses and other designer optical materials, according to an Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory physicist.
In an article titled "Improving Metamaterials" published in the Perspectives section of the Dec. 17 issue of the journal Science, Costas Soukoulis and Martin Wegener write about the man-made materials designed to deliver certain properties not found in nature.
Soukoulis is an Iowa State University Distinguished Professor and Frances M. Craig Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a senior scientist for the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory who collaborates with the University of Crete in Greece and with the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser at the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece. Wegener is the group leader for the Institute of Applied Physics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Metamaterials, sometimes called left-handed materials, are exotic, artificially created materials that provide optical properties not found in natural materials. Metamaterials are able to refract light to the left, or at a negative angle. Natural materials can't do this.
"This backward-bending characteristic provides scientists the ability to control light similar to the way they use semiconductors to control electricity, which opens a wide range of potential applications," Soukoulis said.
One possibility is using metamaterials to develop a flat superlens that operates in the visible light spectrum.
"Such a lens would offer superior resolution over conventional technology, capturing details much smaller than one wavelength of light to vastly improve imaging for materials or biomedical applications," Soukoulis said. "A metamaterial superlens could give researchers the power to see inside a human cell or observe DNA."
The Science article by Soukoulis and Wegene
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| Contact: Costas Soukoulis soukoulis@ameslab.gov 515-294-2816 Iowa State University Source:Eurekalert |
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