Researchers at Northwestern University in the US say that they have designed new types of artificially structured optical materials able to manipulate light in hitherto unimaginable ways. The “lattice opto-materials” as they have been dubbed were developed using Darwinian evolutionary principles thanks to a special algorithm that predicts a specific kind of lattice structure for a material depending on how we would like it to interact with light for a given application. The new materials, which would be impossible to design using traditional, “manual”, techniques, might be used in a wide range of novel and unexpected devices, says team leader Teri Odom…..
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/59265