Squid-inspired Invisibility Stickers Could Help Disguise Soldiers

Squid are the ultimate camouflage artists, blending almost flawlessly into the background so that unsuspecting prey can’t detect them. Using a protein key to this process, UCI researchers have designed “invisibility stickers” that could one day help soldiers disguise themselves, even when sought by enemies with tough-to-fool infrared cameras.

Assistant professor of chemical engineering & materials science Alon Gorodetsky and his team this week presented their novel work at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Denver. ACS, the world’s largest scientific society, prepared a video on the research, available at http://bit.ly/InvisibilityStickersACS.

“Soldiers wear uniforms with the familiar green and brown camouflage patterns to blend into foliage during the day, but under low light and at night, they’re still vulnerable to infrared detection,” Gorodetsky explains. “We’ve developed stickers for use as a thin, flexible layer of camo with the potential to take on a pattern that will better match the soldiers’ infrared reflectance to their background and hide them from active infrared visualization.”