Fractal Antenna Systems,
Inc., the pioneering innovator of fractal antenna and fractal electronics
technology, today announced that it has filed for patent protection on method
and apparatus for producing wideband 'cloaking' devices and wideband metamaterials.
The invention sets a path for the realization of practical devices for rendering
objects less distinguishable from their background (that is, invisible) and
also for thinner microwave, IR, and optical lenses and devices using 'negative
refractive index'.
Previous metamaterial and cloaking devices were incapable of demonstrating
effects beyond a narrow frequency or color range and thus had little or no practical
use. The new approach uses the self similarity of fractal geometry in a prescribed
approach to make the effects work over a much larger band, or range of colors.
The effects are arrived at passively, require no power, and will be reduced
to a 'skin' in future applications.
CEO and inventor Nathan Cohen notes: "Cloaking is still a trick found
only in science fiction, and it is imprudent to claim that true invisibility
will ever be attained. However, this invention shows that there is a methodology,
with a firm physics basis, that can get you there and is a major step forward
in the progress of metamaterials." Cohen notes that the invention is an
application of the complete understanding of the physics of frequency invariance,
a principle requiring fractals,which Cohen and a colleague discovered a decade
ago. Cohen adds: " It is likely that there will be microwave devices that
use this new wideband technology in the next 4 to 5 years and there may be some
optical (visible light) uses in that time line also."