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Getting Light to Bend Backwards

[size=5][b]Getting Light to Bend Backwards[/b][/size](s:Eo4g7a

'K Fq'uIi` 【纳米科技世界快讯】While developing new lenses for next-generation sensors, researchers have crafted a layered material that causes light to refract, or bend, in a manner nature never intended.
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/`x\*S;K Zh^ j Refraction always bends light one way, as one can see in the illusion of a "bent" drinking straw when observed through the side of a glass. A new metamaterial crafted from alternating layers of semiconductors (indium-gallium-arsenic and aluminum-indium-arsenic) acts as a single lens that refracts light in the opposite direction.jx4OD&y&G1`

3@|?eD.G(]_sc o Refraction is the reason that lenses have to be curved, a trait that limits image resolution. With the new metamaterial, flat lenses are possible, theoretically allowing microscopes to capture images of objects as small as a strand of DNA. The current metamaterial lens works with infrared light, but the researchers hope the technology will expand to other wavelengths in the future.C'})k`z(|

tU1pp }#o Earlier efforts have crafted metamaterials that bend light in a similar way, but this is the first to do so using a 3-dimensional structure and a metamaterial comprised entirely of semiconductors. Those traits will prove critical for incorporating the technology into devices such as chemical threat sensors, communications equipment and medical diagnostics tools.
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S E The paper describing the technology appeared online Oct. 14, 2007, in Nature Materials.
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The research was developed primarily at NSF's Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment Engineering Research Center and NSF's Princeton Center for Complex Materials Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.

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