'Invisible' Material Key to DARPA Dream Display

Reason # 573854961875 why I love blogs.
The other day, in a post about DARPA's new projects for 2009, I mentioned that the agency wanted to work on transparent displays.

How would you make those? Simple... By "exploiting the optical plasmon phenomenology characteristics of nanoscale structures." (Contact DANGER ROOM HQ immediately in you can translate.)

Now, lo and behold, we've got a translation. And it makes all kinds of sense, believe it or not.

BW provides us with a relevant paper, and then explains:

Metamaterials can shape visible light and other wavelenths (sound, microwaves etc..). Metamaterials have tended to be metals with particular patterns. The wavelengths interact with the patterns and can be guided by them to make things invisible or to give wavelengths negative indexes of diffraction (enabling superlenses for better microscopes).

Metamaterials can also be made out of non-metals but to effect visible light would need to have nanoscale dimensions (nanoscale structures part).

Plasmons are what are interact[s] with the metamaterial to create the effect.

Plasmons :The quanta of waves produced by collective effects of large numbers of electrons in matter when the electrons are disturbed from equilibrium. Metals provide the best evidence of plasmons, because they have a high density of electrons free to move.

Got it. In fact, we've covered metamaterials a bunch of times here. They're what's behind the science of real-world invisibility cloaks, sonic dampeners, and maybe even levitation.

BW has a fascinating blog, BTW. I'd suggest you bookmark and/or RSS it, right now. I just did.

ALSO:

• Invisible Submarines?
• First, Invisibility Cloaks; Now, Real-World Levitation
• Invisibility Cloaks Inch Closer to Reality
• Shoot-Through, Invisible, Self-Healing Shields: Darpa Goal