In a breakthrough that could benefit fields as diverse as networking, photography, and astronomy, reasearchers at Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research have unveiled their prototype of a glass-like material that they claim to be 100% transparent. Unlike normal glass, which reflects some of the incoming light.
When light passes through material such as glass, a portion of its energy is lost as it reflects off the material’s surface. Researchers at Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) have come up with a theoretical design for preventing this phenomenon from occurring.
The researchers have designed a prism of engineered material — metamaterial comprised of an arrangement of nano-coils of precious metals such as gold or silver — embedded in a solid glass-like material. The prism structure has a negative refractive index, which makes it truly transparent to light, allowing it to pass freely through with no reflection.
In the future, this type of metamaterial prism could lead to improvements in low-loss fiber optic communications, the development of telescopes and cameras well-suited for dark subjects, and the emergence of optical equipment we have never seen before.
Electron microscope photograph of prototype