Scott Hudson Materials Extra Credit November 1, 2013 Extra Credit: A Chameleon in the physics lab Active camouflage

has undergone new advances over at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. A team of applied physicists developed a new coating that conceals its own temperature from thermal cameras. The excitement of the news ushered in a lot of excitement for new military and everyday applications. Robert L. Wallace, Professor of Applied Physics predicts that with minimal adjustments the developed coating could be used as a new type of thermal camouflage or as an encrypted beacon soldiers could use to communicate secretly in the field. The key to this new advancement of technology is a thin film of vanadium oxide. The unique characteristic of this material is that vanadium oxide undergoes dramatic electronic changes at specific temperatures. For example, at room temperature vanadium oxide is electrically insulating. At just slightly higher temperatures the vanadium oxide transitions into a more metallic state that is electrically conductive. During this transition of phases the optical properties also change and with that observation a new camouflage was developed. I enjoyed reading this article because of the way in which the research was presented. Now only has it been discovered that items and materials can become thermally invisible, at least on a greater scale than today, but also that more applications will continue to surface. The article continues to explain different strategies in which the new found stealthy material of vanadium oxide can be used. Overall the crowning achievement of these researchers is that they determined its possible using nano-structures with vanadium oxide to reach a level of personalized tenability that can suppress thermal radiation.