Self-Powering Electronics: New Fabric Metamaterial Generates Electricity From Heat, Movement
Thermoelectrics are not exactly new, but usually made of materials that are brittle, heavy, and expensive. Carroll’s fabric, on the other hand, is lightweight, feels like wool felt, and can be wrapped around surfaces or even sewn into clothing.
While energy can’t be “created” this fabric can essentially pull electricity out if thin air, from heat and movement. The fabric Carroll’s group has can turn heat — from your body, the sun, anywhere — into usable electricity. And unlike anything ever before, it can simultaneously collect power from vibrations or movement — letting your smartphone case bounce on a carseat during a long drive could charge your phone. So could a shirt flapping in the wind.
(via David Carroll On Thermoelectric Fabrics - Business Insider)
Metamaterial Printer Promises Human-Scale Invisibility Cloaking:
The science of stealth has long been a matter of fading into already obscure environments—the night sky, say, or the deep sea. But engineers are now developing materials that could hide anything in plain sight. Instead of bending light inward, like water and glass do, these optical metamaterials bend it outward, guiding photons around an object like river water around a stone. The metal alloys in metamaterials are arranged in a grid fitted with openings smaller than the wavelengths of visible light (400 to 700 nanometers). Light cannot pass unimpeded through any space smaller than its own wavelength, so it gets trapped in the grid. Captured photons can be stored, manipulated or, in this case, funneled around an object and returned to their original course. An object cloaked by a perfectly made metamaterial would cast no shadow.
(via The Newest Revolutions in Metamaterials Bring Invisibility Within Reach | Popular Science)
