

Researchers Use 3D Printer to Craft 'Invisibility Cloak'

A Duke University team has developed a way to use an off-the-shelf 3D printer to produce microwave-deflecting devices they first demonstrated seven years ago.

May 8, 2013

Researchers at Duke University say they've developed a way to use an off-the-shelf 3D printer to produce "invisibility cloaks" they first demonstrated seven years ago.

The cloaking technology developed at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering doesn't actually deflect visible light, the university noted. Instead, it involves fashioning a material with different sized holes based on an algorithm which fools microwave beams into not registering the presence of an opaque object placed at the center of the material.

But assistant research professor of electrical and computer engineering Yaroslav Urzhumov and others working on the technology believe someday soon they will be able to deflect higher wavelengths, including visible light. And now Urzhumov and his team have demonstrated that a microwave-deflecting invisibility cloak can be fashioned in just a few hours and on the relative cheap.

"I would argue that essentially anyone who can spend a couple thousand dollars on a non-industry grade 3D printer can literally make a plastic cloak overnight," Urzhumov was quoted as saying.

Using stereolithographic fabrication, the team fashioned a microwave-deflecting device "which looks like a Frisbee disc made out of Swiss cheese," the university said. Urzhumov and colleagues at Duke and UC San Diego think they can use 3D printing to fabricate even bigger invisibility cloaks.


The researcher said the same principles that make the current devices work should translate to technology which fools the human eye into thinking a cloaked object isn't really there.

"The design of the cloak eliminates the 'shadow' that would be cast, and suppresses the scattering from the object that would be expected. In effect, the bright, highly reflective object, like a metal cylinder, is made invisible. The microwaves are carefully guided by a thin dielectric shell and then re-radiated back into free space on the shadow side of the cloak," he was quoted as saying.

"We believe this approach is a way towards optical cloaking, including visible and infrared. And nanotechnology is available to make these cloaks from transparent polymers or glass. The properties of transparent polymers and glasses are not that different from what we have in our polymer at microwave frequencies."


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About Damon Poeter

Damon Poeter


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