A University of Exeter scientist, Dr. Matt Lockyear, is using foam from inside surfboards to make a material that refracts light to create an “invisibility cloak.” The long sought after invisibility cloak of particular interest to the aerospace industry is a material that is uniformly dense and in response to electromagnetic radiation, behaves in a similar way to air. Dr. Lockyear discovered that the foam inside of surfboards was ideal for his experiments towards creating a free space 3D invisibility cloak.
Inside of a surfboard factory, Lockyear tested his idea by loading the foams with high refractive index powders. The process resulted in a material Lockyear calls a ‘surface wave black hole’ that has a radially graded index placed over a surface of metamaterial. When radiation propagates across the metamaterial, it refracts and spirals inwards to an absorbing core.
