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Published online 10 June 2008 | Nature 453, 834 (2008) | doi:10.1038/453834b

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Near-perfect 'black'

Metamaterials prove to be an absorbing project.

Researchers working with metamaterials say that they are near to achieving a surface that can absorb every photon that hits it.

Physicist Willie Padilla’s group at Boston College in Massachusetts and the team’s colleagues at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, have created structures that provide a proof of principle of these perfectly absorbing surfaces, although they have yet to stop all photons from escaping1.

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  • A classic laser beam stop is a bolted stack of degreased double edged razor blades (375 blades x .004" = 1.5" square target). Thin width, minuscule edge taper, electrical conductivity, and reflectivity combine to an absorptive light trap with no exit. It is a *very* black surface paradoxically composed of mirrors.

    • 11 Jun, 2008
    • Posted by: "Uncle Al" Schwartz
  • Ref. 3 was published in Opt. Express 16, 7181 (2008).

    • 11 Jun, 2008
    • Posted by: Wentao Lu
  • Could we learn to repluse all photon using varing electonmagnetic frequency,causing lumination of the different bands of light to achieve leviation and propulsion by inversing your principles?

    • 12 Jun, 2008
    • Posted by: NORMAN SMITH