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Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and the AMOLF institute in the Netherlands have invented the first mechanical metamaterials that easily transfer motion effortlessly in one direction while blocking it in the other, as described in a paper published on Feb. 13 in Nature. The material can be thought of as a mechanical one-way shield that blocks energy from coming in but easily transmits it going out the other side.

Prof. Andrea Alù’s and PhD candidate Francesco Monticone’s research paper titled ‘Invisibility Exposed: Physical Bounds on Passive Cloaking’ will be published in the Optical Society’s flagship journal Optica in the upcoming issue. Together, Prof. Alù and Monticone have established quantitative physical limitations on the performance of cloaking devices, a technology that allows objects to become invisible or undetectable for electromagnetic waves, such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared and visible light.