Funding boost for artificial matter research
16 Apr 2014
Research into using metamaterials is set to receive a £2.5 million investment from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.
Metamaterials, an artificial type of matter, exhibit unusual properties not seen in natural materials and can therefore be manipulated in uncommon ways.
For example, light entering a metamaterial slab can be bent in the opposite direction to that which is expected.
Utilising the £2.5m investment, researchers based at Imperial College London, the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University will apply concepts to fields such as acoustic metamaterials, thermal cloaking and to engineer designer metamaterials with specific properties as part of a five year study.
Project leader Professor Richard Craster said: “This is an unusual and novel grant in metamaterials as it is centred around mathematical concepts and theory but nonetheless with considerable input from physics.
“The collaboration with our colleagues from the physics group, where metamaterials were originally developed, will provide unique insight and access to cutting edge ideas from physics that mathematicians can turn into solid rigorous theory.”
Extending the concepts into thermal metamaterials could ultimately benefit laptop users. Currently, for example, computer chips in laptops become hot, limiting the amount of transistors and computer power which can be put in a chip - thermal transfer could overcome this issue.
Meanwhile, creating a so-called ’perfect lens’ using metamaterials is also thought to be possible.
A perfect lens would enable light microscopes to see objects smaller than a single wave-length of light, such as a single virus.
Currently only an electron microscope can image to this resolution with the drawback that cells need to be dead or frozen. A perfect lens created by metamaterials would allow scientists to break the so-called Rayleigh limit of diffraction.
Moreover, it is also thought that advancements in metamaterials research could provide a wide range of real-world applications where waves play a role, even potentially cloaking buildings from earthquakes.
French collaborators on the project are already using cloaking principles in seismic wave systems to try and ’hide’ buildings from ground vibrations caused, for example, by trains.
