This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Who has not dreamed of an invisibility cloak like the one used by Harry Potter? It sounds like magic, but it could become reality with the help of so-called metamaterials.
In the summer of 2026, some of the world's leading researchers in the field gathered in Umeå for a Nobel Symposium on metamaterials. The symposium was organized by Nicolò Maccaferri, associate professor at Umeå University. He studies these special materials, which over the past few decades have proven useful in fields ranging from telecommunications to medical technology.
"Unlike most other materials, the properties of metamaterials are determined not primarily by the atoms and molecules they are made of, but by their design," Maccaferri says. He compares them to a musical instrument: The sound it produces depends not only on whether it is made of wood or metal, for example, but also on its shape. Recently, he published a Comment in the journal Nature Materials with international colleagues, describing how the field has inspired an entirely new way of thinking about scientific problems.
The concept of metamaterials was introduced in the late 1990s. It is based on the idea that very small structures, smaller than a wavelength, can be used as building blocks to give materials the ability to control waves, whether electromagnetic, acoustic or seismic, in ways that do not occur in nature. "Instead of asking only what a material naturally does, we ask what we want it to do—and then design its structure to achieve that function," Maccaferri says.
Interest in metamaterials took off when researchers showed that such structures could, in principle, be designed to guide light around an object, potentially rendering it invisible. Today, there are already many promising applications of metamaterials. They can be used to make very thin camera lenses, improved solar cells, better displays and sensitive detectors.
They can also control sound and ultrasound, which could be useful in noise reduction and medical imaging. "I find the sensing and health care applications especially exciting. Imagine small, fast and affordable devices that can detect early signs of disease, monitor the environment or analyze food quality," Maccaferri says.
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