Japanese researchers invent completely transparent material
By Evan Blass 
posted May 2nd 2006 2:50PM
posted May 2nd 2006 2:50PM
In a breakthrough
that could benefit fields as diverse as networking, photography, astronomy, and peeping, science-types at Japan's
Institute of Physical and Chemical Research have unveiled their prototype of a glass-like material that they claim to
be 100% transparent. Unlike normal glass, which reflects some of the incoming light, the new so-called metamaterial
--composed of a grid of gold or silver nanocoils embedded in a prism-shaped, glass-like material -- uses its unique
structural properties to achieve a negative refractive index, or complete transparency. Although currently just a
one-off proof-of-concept (pictured, under an electron microscope), mass-produced versions of the new material could
improve fiber optic communications, contribute to better telescopes and cameras, or lead to the development of
completely new optical equipment.
This will make those 'people walking into clear glass panes' videos even funnier.
What do you think Wonder Woman's airplane was made out of? I think the Justice League should sue.
more birds flying into windows...
What???? And here i was thinking that 'transparent aluminium' was gonna be the new see-through material of the future!
That has already been done (with Alumina [Aluminum Oxide Alloy] anyway)... probably by some asinine bastard from the future who traded it for sheets of plexiglass or something... DAMN YOU TIME-TRAVELING CARPETBAGGERS!!!
READ: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/20033
this will be great to get the glare from windows off your tv when watching during the daytime
I feel bad for all the birds now.
"Now where did I put my completely transparent glasses?"
care for a floating blob of wine?
big deal, i've developed all kinds of completely transparent stuff..
see right here, this is my completely transparent fully autonomous robot that does my job for me..
and this, I'm proud of this one, it's my completely transparent monster truck that runs on air..
you can't see it? well, it's there, I promise :P
I don't think that too many doors or windows are going to be made of this (gold?). It would be like making a patio door out of nikon/canon/zeiss lens glass; crazy expensive and useless once the dust and fingerprints get on it.
The old Saran-Wrap on the toliet gag just got a major, but expensive, upgrade.
This is the material for the iPod Invisa
This is an old trick. They're trying to get the Emperor's money. Wait... hold on I have that backwards. :-
could "lead to the development of completely new optical equipment".
if they are talking about glasses. dont glasses work on the principal of changing the refractivity to balance out the miscurvature of your eyes. which would mean that this stuff wouldnt even work for glasses b/c there is no refractivity.
*walks into patio window
I see a new clothing fashion trend. Actually, I don't
not quite Bam, they put reflective coatings on glasses already to stop glare.. its the shape of the glass that actually does the dirty work..
*hot girl walks by wearing transparent clothes
If you made a lense out of this stuff, would it be any different than making one out of a flat pice of glass? I can't think of any use for this if thats the case.
thinking the same thing bam
So it's to light as a superconductor is to electrons. Awesome. No more booster stations for fibre.
-KJ
so... if it's completely transparent -- how is it that i can see a photo of it? ;-)
re: #2 -- don't know but I was very disappointed that her aircraft manufacturer was not also her tailor. :-D And, yes, the Justice League should sue her pants off. Pretty please. Hell, they should take her to the cleaners and even get the shirt off her back. We could only hope.
ok, i'll shut up now.
They probably wouldn't make windows out of this stuff, but they could make TV screens out of it (although that would jack up the price, I imagine). Otherwise, I don't imagine that it would see a lot of everyday use in the home. It's just not practical.
It could be useful for a lot of high-tech things like microscopes, observatory telescopes and fiber-optic cables, though. Maybe it could also be used to make special focusing lenses for lasers or something too.
1) Refractivity depends on wavelength, from the picture it seems that they have created a form of resonant cavity like wavechannel, thus it is to be very wavelength limited, depending on the shape of the guide.
2) Negative refractivity is a different concept, notice that refractivity depends on the square root of permittivity and permeability, which are positive values in ordinary tranparent material. If the ratio is negative, then there is something in the material that propagates or channels the wave, which exactly the gold waveguides does. In a completely transparent material the speed of light does not change in medium, thus n=1, and compex counterpart k is 0. Optical equipment is possible, by playing with the waveguide.
3) From wikipedia: The first Superlens (an optical lens employing negative refraction with vastly improved microscopic resolution) was created and demonstrated in 2005 by Xiang Zhang et al of UC Berkeley, as reported in the April 22 issue of the journal Science [1]
Although this is state of the art nanotechnology, don't give up your hope yet, transparent aliminum would still be a bigger achievment.
I'm not sure this will make that much difference to fiber optics. For fiber optic lines, the point of being nearly transparent is to keep the signal from fading over distance. Even in 1993, though, I was reading about fibers that could carry a terabit in the lab over 3000 miles without repeaters.
However, that might have been with optical amplifiers. If you could get rid of those, then long-distance fiber would be even cheaper.
#13 and #18
no, not quite. from http://physics.ucsd.edu/lhmedia/ :
"As an example, a lens made from LHM that would be converging if made from conventional material, will be diverging, and vice-versa. Also, a thick flat plate (window) of LHM can focus radiation from a point source back to a point."
so you could make glasses out it, but the curve needed would opposite of conventional glass, allowing certain very thick glasses to be made with much thiner and lighter material.
my boy's wicked smaht!
-casey affleck
I wonder how this could positively affect solar (energy) technologies?
I'd prefer more durable, smudge-proof, scratch-proof glass for a camera lense.
Enz: That's pretty funny. We'd need straws with our wine. It'd be pretty funny trying to find the rim of the glass each time you wanted to take a sip.
They go into some extensive detail about its properties. The translated page: http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.riken.jp%2Fr-world%2Finfo%2Frelease%2Fpress%2F2006%2F060406%2Findex.html&langpair=ja%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8
Note: The button at the bottom of that page is the "Next" button.
http://www.ps.missouri.edu/rickspage/refract/refraction.html
Funy to read this a year later after you post this http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/20/canadian-inventor-discovers-x-ray-vision-maybe/
Also funny to read nerds' neurotic humour in reaction to something that their little brain couldn't grasp.
Re:21
it looks like an electron microscope image.
oh...
i waas hoping they were talking about fabric...although, im not sure how much of a market there is for see-through clothing, now that i think about it...haha
... What if they put it down and then don't remember where they put it?
Since fiber optic technology kinda relies on the fact that light reflects off it's surface, which is tied in to the refractive properties of such material, I don't see how this could be used in any way to improve fiber obtic technology.
Am I incorrect? It wouldn't be the first time.
Seems like it would have to have no reflection, both internally and on the surface, for it to be useful as a lens. If it has no refraction, it can't be a lens.
transparent, not invisible, people. there is a difference.
#obm: Thanks for your physical explanation, it's the only productive and worth of reading post in all the thread.
"38. transparent, not invisible, people. there is a difference."
A 100% transparent material would essentially be invisible, as it would allow all light to pass through it. We can see objects, because light reflects off of them. Perhaps you were thinking of "translucent".
37 - the coating on fiber optic lines currently is what keeps the signal from bouncing out of the fibers, along with the refractive distance; a similar reflective coating on the outside will do the same thing, preventing loss, it's just inner transmission speeds will be better and losses smaller.
Finally, the old story about the Emperor will be true...
So wait... if this new material is completely, 100%, transparent, how did they take a picture of it?
I mean, if it's invisible, shouldn't it be, well... invisible?
This seems like it would be an excellent material for use on displays. The plastic and glass used today for CRT and LCDs are prone to be highly reflectant or have bad glare issues in general. A transparent material with no glare or reflections would be huge. Imagine sitting in front of your LCD tv with a lamp on behind you and not having it reflected in the glass or trying to read your cell phone on an overcast day.
For everyone asking about how they took a pic - its a pic from an electron microscope - when they say 100% transparent I assume that they mean visible light - it seems unlikely you could apply heat to this glass and its temperature wouldn't increase (although that would be cool!) - hence there is no reason why a pic on an electron microscope or via an IR or UV camera the glass wouldn't appear clear as day.
It says on the picture it was taken using a 5KeV electron beam.
Maybe this will take care of lens flare and the 'orb' effect that make people think there's a "spiritual lifeform" that they photographed.
It's odd that this is a big deal, it has been around for some time. I have seen it in a lab. It is not actually invisible to the eye, it is wavelength sensitive, so it only has the negative refraction value for one wavelength (and it is not a visible wavelength). Keep in mind that it actually is visible even in its set wavelength because it has a negative refraction value; only when paired with an equal positive wavelength value does it become invisible at that wavelength.
actually, on the point of new optical equipment, I could definitly see this as being the material that future higher-quality IOLs (inner ocular lenses). The completely transparent quality that the "glass" posseses would further resemble a natural lense, or actaully make it better
I won't believe it until i see it.
Does this mean they'll never have any pictures of it that aren't from an electron microscope?
Invisible to visible light, you morons, not to electrons which have a much smaller wavelength. I imagine this photograph was taken with a scanning electron microscope.
Here is something you can try to wrap your brain around. With a positive index of refraction the phase velocity of the light in the material is slower than in free space, but with a negative index of refraction the phase velocity is faster, so the phase velocity of light in this material may actually get to be larger than the speed of light. The reson this still works (though not actually true) is because the group velocity or the speed at which information is transfered is still slower than the speed of light. One interesting consequence of this is that you can actually make it so that your phase velocity propagates the opposite way as your information. Though it would take some work, and i can't see a real application to it other than some odd research work for some poor phd student.
Um...this is not a very big deal.
1. Metamaterials operate on electromagnetic waves with a wavelength that is much larger than the unit cell size. From the picture the unit cell is about 15 microns, so this material works at a wavelength of 100 mircrons or larger, no where near visible light, though perhaps useful for Terahertz imaging. (Terahertz is a pretty useful band for security related applications.)
2. The material they made only responds to magnetic fields in one dimension. You would need the ring structures in three oreintations to make an isotropic material. This material will reflect like crazy if you send in the wrong polarization or unpolarized waves.
3. These are not even the smallest split ring resonators every made, i.e. other groups have made smaller rings that operate closer to visible light.
http://www.cfn.uni-karlsruhe.de/web/index.php?tabId=312
4. This is a freaking press release. It is very difficult to make and verify negative index media at that length scale. I hope they did succeed.
These would make cool booths or kiosks where vendors could hire sexy betelnut girls to market their products. Guys would be like, "hey let's go talk to that hot sales girl" and *WHAM* they'll hit the transparent glass. LOL. It would make it safe for sales girls to wear skimpy clothing in hostile environments. Oh but first they'd have to make it bullet-proof! =p
It is a challenge to human mind to create something useful and appropiate to the enviroment
I'm not an opthomologist or astronomer, but wouldn't lenses created from this material help our long range visible observations of deep space?
If so, then I see where there is a market for this, otherwise Windex is going to rise up and crush this new product just to keep from going out of business.
My only suggestion for using this would be for aquariums; from consumer goldfish bowls, to huge Sea World aquatic habitats. Makes for easy viewing of fishes, without feeling like you're going cross-eyed.
birds fly into windows because they see the reflection of the sky in the glass, not because its transparent.
If you think of "transparent" strictly in terms of having zero opacity, then yes, I think an object can be transparent without being invisible. If it can refract light, you can probably detect the light shift and thus a sort of "silhouette" of the object. Kinda like the Predator's cloaking ability, right?
A box made out of this stuff will make any mime an excellent mime!
I tried to construct this but it is good to hear from you.