Artificial skin could make soldiers invisible

[Eldorado]

A new research paper out of South Korea details a new cloaking “skin” composed of bendable patches that use active heating and cooling to mimic either visible colors or thermal characteristics of the environment. They can switch from one to the other in about five seconds — allowing the wearer to camouflage themselves in the daytime and barely show up on thermal cameras at night.

These patches are built up of “pixels” containing thermochromic liquid crystals that change color depending on temperature, “thus allowing the generation of a diverse number of colors by controlling temperature. The cloaking in the visible range is therefore achieved separately by matching the ambient color,” says the paper, produced by a team led by Seung Hwan Ko at Seoul National University.

Full article at Defense One: Link

Research paper PDF: Admin govexec dot com