Techno-clothing company utilizes graphene to make jacket invisible to infrared cameras.

Thanks to the "wonder material" graphene, the invisibility cloak often seen in fantasy and science fiction will likely soon be a thing of reality, as Vollebak unveils the world's first thermal camouflage jacket that brings us one step closer to disappearing into thin air.

Home to the initial discovery of graphene and two researchers that won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work with this 2D material, the University of Manchester has lent its graphene expertise to Vollebak, a techno-clothing company that has brought unique innovations such as the antimicrobial Full Metal Jacket built with 65% copper.

"We've spent three years working with the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester to build the world's first Thermal Camouflage Jacket," Vollebak penned in its announcement. "Designed to eventually make the human body invisible to infrared cameras, it's a computer-programmable jacket that brings us one step closer to turning the invisibility cloak from science fiction into reality."

You can read about Vollebak's "Full Metal Jackets" in Copper materializes as post-COVID style in the May 27, 2020, edition of Metal Tech News.

Graphene pixels

Vollebak says its Thermal Camouflage Jacket is the first computer-programmable jacket, as well as a first toward an invisibility cloak. What makes it so unique? Because in infrared, it can be programmed to have entire sections simply disappear.

While the jacket is still in its early stages, the rudimentary device is equipped with 42 graphene patches that can be controlled individually, just like pixels. Every patch is then made up of over 100 layers of pure graphene. With these layer, it is possible to control thermal radiation on the jacket's surface without changing its temperature.

To demonstrate its progress, the company spent a week showing that to innovate, you cannot forget to have fun and thus designed the graphene patches to play Tetris!

So instead of seeing heat radiating from a human body, the camera simply sees the pattern of the hit 1980s computer game.

In order to accomplish such a whimsical feat, Vollebak started by uploading code from a computer to a microcontroller on the jacket.

Gold and copper printed wiring then runs to each graphene patch, applying voltage to them. The voltage then forces ions between the graphene layers using an ionic liquid, and the more ions that are pushed between the graphene layers, the less thermal radiation is emitted and the colder it appears.

While showcasing the jacket in such a fun way shows the simple function of the jacket, a key detail is that every patch can apparently be programmed individually to emit a different level of thermal radiation. In this way, it can blend into its surroundings and appear "invisible" to infrared cameras – something that should be extremely useful against the Predator aliens.

Up next: full invisibility

Vollebak predicts that while the Thermal Camouflage Jacket only operates on the infrared spectrum today, by using graphene, it should be feasible to build a version that also operates on the visible spectrum at the same time.

"Graphene is a highly tuneable material, which means that applying energy to it changes how it appears on both the infrared spectrum and the visible spectrum," the company wrote. "So theoretically at least, changing the charge density of the graphene will change the colour we see. And once you've got one device that controls all wavelengths, that's when the possibility of building an invisibility cloak starts to become very real."

Although this isn't the first time that attempts at cloaking have been made, present technology has yielded cumbersome blocks of "glass" that warps light through it so that it appears to have disappeared.

And as it is not realistic to wear suits of thick glass, this could very well be the initial technology to have fully cloaked capabilities.

Perhaps it is justified that the maverick scientists that first brought graphene to bear are followed by a maverick company with big dreams.

"We know the future doesn't build itself. Someone has to take the first step. Flying cars and invisibility cloaks aren't going to magically appear by themselves just because we read about them as kids. So having already built clothing for climate change, space colonization, and the Apocalypse, an invisibility cloak was always going to be next on our list," Vollebak wrote.

Now comes the challenges

While invisibility cloaks are fun in theory, the real world gives little regard to that sentiment, so there are plenty of kinks to iron out before introverts can go walking around outside without fear of being bothered.

"Building one in the real world is naturally a lot harder than it looks in the films, as you run straight into two interconnected problems," Vollebak noted. "The first is that it's not enough to hide a human on the visible spectrum. We've been doing variations of that for tens of thousands of years by hiding in bushes or in the shadows to hunt prey. You have to hide them on the infrared spectrum too. And human beings are really bright on infrared cameras. We radiate around 200 watts. So if you're going to try and hide someone – which is the whole point of the invisibility cloak – you have to start by hiding them on the infrared spectrum. Which is why we've started here."

Because of the recentness of graphene, every day new discoveries are being found about this wonder material. Due to its incredible functions, the sky is the limit, which is all the reasoning a company like Vollebak is exploring this 2D material for its invisibility cloak.

"The second problem is that to hide someone on the infrared spectrum, you need to build something that's half clothing and half machine. And that's not something that's really been done before," the high-tech clothing manufacturer pointed out. "Electronic devices and fabric are historically incompatible. Very simply one is hard, and the other is soft, which creates a huge number of interdisciplinary challenges."

While comfort does not seem to be on the menu for first-generation cloaking clothes, perhaps some exploration back into science fiction will be the needed inspiration. Nevertheless, it'll first take a firm understanding of the non-fictional sciences.

"So for the last three years we've been bringing together the fields of physics, optical materials, electronic control systems, textiles and engineering, to create a single piece of clothing that someone can actually wear, that is also an advanced optical device," Vollebak continued. "Today it's simply a proof of concept, and the jacket is not for sale. But hopefully we're on our way to creating something so advanced that you'll never actually see it."