Invisibility cloaks were deemed impossible in real life until the creation of metamaterials. Metamaterials made of metals that have unique optical properties, such as magnetic resonance and have control over negative refractive index, have drawn interest from academia and industry. However, the material is created through the lithography method, which is expensive, time consuming, size-limited.

Professor Kim Jin-kon (CE) and Kim Moo-seong (CE, Ph.D. Integrated) have teamed up with Professor Rho Jun-suk (CE/ME) and Mun Jung-ho (CE, Ph.D Integrated), and developed an accordion-like silver structure which can apply the self-assembling phenomenon of a block copolymer, forming a metamaterial substrate.

Block copolymers consist of simple nanostructures, making the application to metamaterials difficult since metamaterials control its structure or arrangement for optical properties. To overcome this difficulty, the team chose to give the block copolymer a clogging effect.

The result of the study was published online at NPG Asia Materials, a paper published by Nature. The paper is receiving considerable interest, for it uses block copolymers, which were known to be difficult to apply to metamaterials.