Physicist Stefano Martiniani at New York University has designed a new class of metamaterials called gyromorphs that can block light from every direction. The materials combine crystal-like geometric structure with random, liquid-like disorder.
Martiniani likens the structure to a crowd of people. If individuals stand in straight lines, you can see through them. If they cluster randomly, you cannot. Yet gyromorphs maintain a form of order: from any position within the material, you see a ring of structure at a given distance.
Physicists previously believed such hybrid materials were structurally impossible to create. "But this is evidence that you can, under certain constraints," Martiniani says.
Gyromorphs are a type of metamaterial, substances engineered to have properties not found in nature. Metamaterials control light, sound, and other waves and are used in smartphones, medical imaging, and computers. Martiniani suggests gyromorphs could enable more energy-efficient optical computers that use light to process and store data.
Martiniani used FReSCo, an algorithm developed by his lab that designs molecular structures to meet specified objectives. "We had an algorithm, we gave it an objective, and then it was able to solve that objective, finding a solution that we were not expecting," he says. "That is the best kind of discovery."