A technology has been developed that will allow us to create camouflaging metamaterials that can detect colours and automatically blend into a background.

The new full-color display, which has been developed by researchers Rice University, US, uses aluminium nanoparticles to create hues that are found in TV and computer screens.

The researchers developed the technology after setting out to copy the skin camouflaging abilities of squid.

Once materials such as this are created, it may be possible for them to be used to help camoflauge high-tech military vehicles or even be sued for applications in urban environments to hide unsightly objects.

The researchers hope to combine the display technology with others developed by the team, which can sense light and are also able to display patterns on large polymer sheets.

Members of the team have previously published research that shows it is possible to create flexible polymer displays that can change colour to match their surroundings.

Naomi Halas from the university said: “We hope to eventually bring all of these technologies together to create a new material that can sense light in full color and react with full-color camouflage displays.”

Pixels on the display, which measure five microns in size, are around 40 times smaller than those pixels that are used on commercial LCD displays.

Aluminium nanorods were arranged using an electron beam to create a regular arrangement of the rods.

Each pixel contains several hundred nanorods. The researchers were able to control these by varying the length of the rods and also the spaces between them.

The team said they are basing their work on squid, and similar creatures, because their skins are able to adapt to the conditions they are in.

“Our goal is to learn from these amazing animals so that we could create new materials with the same kind of distributed light-sensing and processing abilities that they appear to have in their skins.

“We know cephalopods have some of the same proteins in their skin that we have in our retinas, so part of our challenge, as engineers, is to build a material that can ‘see’ light the way their skin sees it, and another challenge is designing systems that can react and display vivid camouflage patterns,” Halas said.

Image one and two courtesy of Rice University