Previous work on cloaking objects from view used so-called metamaterials made of manmade materials with unusual properties that can cause light beams to bend around an object and meet on the other side.

“We were inspired by this idea,” says Gang Chen, a mechanical engineering professor at MIT who decided to study how a similar technique might apply to electrons instead of light.

The concept developed by Chen and his team takes advantage of the fact that electrons travel through materials in a way that is similar to the motion of electromagnetic waves, including light.