A material called a Weyl sonic crystal that can reflect sound or light is expected to aid photonic electronics because it can reflect a beam light back to its source as a mirror image of itself.
This mirror image reflection is called negative refraction. Refraction is when sound or light waves change their direction, being bent, as they travel from one medium to another, for example air and glass. Refraction is used in optics for microscopes and cameras to focus the light to create a clear image. Negative refraction is when this does not happen and instead the light is reflected directly back. One possible application to photonics that has already been proposed is a super lens for a biosensor that uses negative refraction photonic crystals. These superlensing properties could provide images in dimensions at the nano and micro scale.
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