“So you’ve finally done it, eh? What’s the wavelength range?”

“About 350 on the short end to just under 1000. We couldn’t get anything smaller without moving to nanofabrication.”

“And above 1000?”

“Well, that’s relatively simple, but we’d have to make the material thicker.”

“You said that this is all done without nanotech? That’s certainly a breakthrough. You can mass-produce it?”

“The trick was varying the voltage gradient as the bicrystalline system comes out of solution. The negative refractive index is achieved by the cuprates embedded in the silicate matrix, and the crystal size correlates with the wavelength it affects.”

“Clever.”

“We weren’t the first to try to get such a thing to self-assemble, but our process is the first that works, as far as we know.”

“As far as you know.”

“Well, if someone else had come up with it first, who knows? They might be standing in this room with us right now.”

“Heh. I suppose with invisibility cloaks it doesn’t hurt to be extra paranoid.”