A biotechnology company headquartered in Canada has announced future scientific materials that are lightweight, thin, and affordable, and has successfully entered the patent application stage. This material can blend with its environment and is prototyped as a "quantum stealth" material for military purposes. While Canadian companies are developing invisibility cloaks out of materials as thin as this paper, South Korean researchers have developed an "artificial skin" that could take the technology to the next level, allowing soldiers to fully blend into their surroundings.
This new technology may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but there are vivid examples of this in nature too. Chameleons, for example, have the ability to blend into their surroundings. The main principle of the invention is to take this natural invisibility ability to the next stage from the visible light spectrum by blocking the wearer's thermal signature. This new technology can not only camouflage itself, but also cool or heat itself. The conversion process takes about 5 seconds depending on the surrounding environment, greatly improving the soldier's camouflage capabilities.
It should be noted that in people's imagination, "invisible" and "invisible" in the military field have different meanings. People usually understand that "invisible" means invisible and integrated with the environment. In the military field, "invisible" mainly means that electromagnetic wave detection equipment such as radar cannot be found. The "super invisible" "quantum invisible" material belongs to electronics, which is characterized by not using power (referred to as passive materials or components in academic language), as thin as paper, and close to colorless in color. According to the disclosure of the patent they applied for, the principle of lenticular lenses is mainly used, and the light entering the material is bent to bypass the blocked object.
Therefore, the essence of the so-called "quantum invisible" material is a new structural design based on the principles of geometric optics. It belongs to the category of lens optics and geometric optics that humans have studied and applied for thousands of years. Quantum wells (microscopic particles such as electrons are restricted from moving in one direction), quantum wires (microscopic particles are restricted from moving in two directions), quantum dots (microscopic particles such as electrons are restricted from moving in two directions) and are based on quantum effects and quantum effects discovered in the past 100 years. Movement in three directions is restricted) and other quantum materials have nothing to do with.