Last year it was Purdue University researchers touting the use of nanotechnology to create Harry Potter-like optical cloaking device that could make objects invisible. This week, a pair of Carnegie Mellon University researchers say they have come up with an invisibility cloak for nanoparticles.

The CMU breakthrough could open the way for a new wave of durable material technologies that look better than current ones, which can appear whitish due to the way light is affected by some particles.

Now you might think that nanoparticles, being so teensy, are essentially invisible in the first place. Nevertheless, CMU’s Michael Bockstaller (Materials Science and Engineering) and Krzysztof Matyjaszewski (Chemistry) have joined forces to show that the visible size of nanoparticles can be shrunk by a factor of thousands without technically changing the particles’ physical dimension. Their breakthrough is documented in Advanced Materials Magazine.

Matyjaszewski said in a statement: “Essentially, what we learned how to do was to control the density, composition and size of polymers attached to inorganic materials which in turn improves the optical transparency of polymer composites. In a sense, light can flow freely through the particle by putting ‘grease’ onto its surface.”

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