The research was carried out by King's College London
When light hits an object, the colour, texture, and shape affect how light is absorbed and reflected, allowing you to make out the object in front of you. By altering the surface to change how light is reflected, it is possible to manipulate how it appears.
The researchers developed layered materials, incorporating precisely designed nano-features smaller than the wavelength of light, called metasurfaces. This allowed them to control how light is reflected in highly precise ways, so that a 2-D surface reflects light just as a 3-D object would.
Borrowing a technique from 3-D computer graphics called Normal Mapping, researchers encoded shadow effects into the image, creating 3-D images more realistic than holograms or 3-D cinema. As a proof of concept, the researchers fabricated a flat metasurface imitating lighting and shading effects of a 3-D cube.
Changing the way we see light
The technique could have huge implications for the optical industries, including in TV screens and photography, as well as in security labels for protecting goods and banknotes from counterfeiting.
Professor Anatoly Zayats of King's College says: "Metasurfaces are amazing. They open up unprecedented freedom in directing and manipulating light. One might ultimately imagine a TV screen which appears exactly the same as you move around it, or a new movement of 3-D art."
The ability to control light could bring new functionality to small camera lenses. A flat surface can be made to appear optically convex by designing appropriate metasurface properties. Future generations of smartphone cameras could use the tiny flat metasurfaces which mimic the properties of sophisticated curved camera lenses, allowing much greater control of angle and depth field.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-scientists-flat-surfaces-d.html#jCp
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