One of the great advances in materials sciences in recent years has been the development of metamaterials and metasurfaces with optical properties that are not found in nature. These materials contain repeating elements that interact with electromagnetic waves to reflect, bend, and distort light.
In this way, researchers have built materials with negative refractive index, super-resolution lenses, and even invisibility cloaks. The same kind of tricks are possible with reflective surfaces too. Researchers have made metasurfaces that act as flat lenses, vortex beam generators, and even as computer-generated holograms.
And that raises an interesting question—just how much further can materials scientists take this technology?
Today we find out thanks to the work of Stephanie Malek and pals at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. They’ve printed a hologram onto a metasurface and shown how it changes as the film is stretched. The work points the way toward a new kind of display that switches the information it displays as it stretches.
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