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IMAGE: Photo of a metamaterial composed of a pattern of resonators. The defect appears as a pentagon in an otherwise regular array of circuit elements. view more
Credit: Kitt Peterson
Real-world materials are usually messier than the idealized scenarios found in textbooks. Imperfections can add complications and even limit a material s usefulness. To get around this, scientists routinely strive to remove defects and dirt entirely, pushing materials closer to perfection. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have turned this problem around and shown that for some materials defects could act as a probe for interesting physics, rather than a nuisance.