No meta-jokes, please

Massive funding is rolling in for metamaterials – something if you don’t know about now, you might well do in the next decade or two. Last year, nanoimprinting raised the possibility of mass-manufactured invisibility cloaks (yep, Physics is cool). However, only last week, scientists in Singapore made a breakthrough in fabrication by increasing the thickness of fishnet metamaterials – whilst over in America a dash of magnetron sputtering helped produce one of the first metal-dialectric epitaxial superlattices (try saying that after a pint or two – to anyone who’ll listen…). So what’s all the fuss about? Well, metamaterials have tiny patterns on their surfaces which give them phenomenally exciting nanophotonic properties – basically, the ability to control light – which could be used to make anything from quantum computers to an optical microscope capable of seeing DNA, as well as fabled invisibility cloaks. It’s no surprise, then, that the metamaterials market might be worth around $643m by 2025, so look them up if you want to study Physics, Materials Science, or Natural Sciences (P).