Bio-Inspired Materials Research Unclassified

Nature Already
Solved Invisibility.

A leafhopper insect coats itself in microscopic geometry that scatters ultraviolet light almost completely, hiding it from predators that see in that spectrum.[12][13] We're replicating that geometry as a synthetic meta-material, a passive, terrain-independent way to reduce how visible an object or person is to detection.

OriginMacrosteles fascifrons
MechanismMie Scattering
StatusActive Fabrication
InstitutionUSMA
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Camouflage Without a Pattern.

Most anti-reflective coatings are engineered from a blank sheet. This one already survived roughly four hundred million years of being hunted. Birds, the leafhopper's primary predator, see well into the ultraviolet, a part of the spectrum invisible to us. The brochosome's geometry evolved specifically to defeat that vision,[5] scattering UV light so completely that the insect effectively disappears to the eyes hunting it.[13]

The shape is what we're replicating, not a color or a pattern. That's what makes it useful[12] beyond one insect and one predator.

Predator-Independent

The geometry scatters light itself. It doesn't rely on color-matching a background or mimicking a specific environment.[12]

Fully Passive

No power source, no moving parts, no active signal to detect. The effect comes entirely from the particle's shape.

Orientation & Weather Agnostic

Because scattering happens at the particle level, performance doesn't depend on viewing angle, lighting conditions, or terrain, a limitation most camouflage approaches share.

The same shape-driven concealment principle is now being tested for a very different kind of exposure: how easily objects and personnel can be detected across the optical and radio spectrum, built on four hundred million years of field testing.

This Is What A Predator Sees.

Flip the switch. The photograph on the right is the same insect, shot under the two conditions that matter: the light we see in, and the light a hunting bird sees in. Nothing about the leafhopper changes between the two states. Only the wavelength does. The underlying physics is Mie scattering[10], the same effect that governs how any particle scatters light near its own size.

That's the entire premise of this project: geometry that disappears in exactly the band that predation depends on.

The leafhopper Macrosteles fascifrons photographed under visible light, appearing bright yellow-green and clearly visible. The same leafhopper photographed under ultraviolet light, appearing as a faint dark silhouette, nearly invisible.
Photograph: Wu et al., 2025, eLife[13] · CC BY 4.0
94% less light reflected back[12]
Visible light. Clearly visible to predators.

Who's Behind It.

The current team is small by design during a rebuilding year. Earlier contributors, among others, laid groundwork this project still builds on.

Current Team
Gennaro M. Smith Electrical Eng. & Computer Science
Benjamin D. Garcia Physics & Nuclear Eng.
Research Advisors
LTC Jacob W. Capps Physics & Nuclear Eng.
LTC William K. North Electrical Eng. & Computer Science
Early Contributors
Elaine J. Joyce Mechanical & Aerospace Eng.
Pierce A. Bazewicz Mechanical & Aerospace Eng.
Institution
USMA
West Point, NY 10996
Point of Contact

benjamin.garcia@westpoint.edu

Attachments
  • Material Cloaking, IEEE RAPID Submission PDF
  • HEART Conference Submission, 2026 PDF
  • RAPID 2026 Presentation PPTX

References

  1. Alitalo, P., Ranvier, S., Vehmas, J., & Tretyakov, S. A microwave transmission-line network guiding electromagnetic fields through a dense array of metallic objects. Department of Radio Science and Engineering / SMARAD Center of Excellence, TKK Helsinki University of Technology, Elsevier.

  2. Capps, J. W. (2022). Application and validation of Geant4 modeling for optimization of complex structures for fast neutron detection (Doctoral dissertation, Oregon State University). Department of Physics.

  3. Chu, H., Li, Q., Liu, B., et al. (2018). A hybrid invisibility cloak based on integration of transparent metasurfaces and zero-index materials. Light: Science & Applications, 7(50). doi.org/10.1038/s41377-018-0052-7

  4. Keysight Technologies. Technical specifications for 9018-70012. Keysight / Electro Rent.

  5. Rakitov, R., Moysa, A. A., Kopylov, A. T., et al. (2018). Brochosomins and other novel proteins from brochosomes of leafhoppers (Insecta, Hemiptera, Cicadellidae). Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 94, 10–17. doi.org/10.1016/j.ibmb.2018.01.001

  6. Ramsey Electronics. STE6000M RF shielded test enclosure. Ramsey Electronics.

  7. Smith, D. S., & Littau, V. G. (1960). Cellular specialization in the excretory epithelia of an insect, Macrosteles fascifrons Stål (Homoptera). Journal of Cell Biology, 8, 103–133.

  8. Smith, G. A. (2022). Fresnel equations. The University of Arizona, Wyant College of Optical Sciences. webs.optics.arizona.edu/gsmith/Fresnel.html

  9. Thompson, S. M., Talò, M., Krause, B., et al. (2022). The effect of branched carbon nanotubes as reinforcing nano-filler in polymer nanocomposites. Composite Structures, 295, 115794. doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2022.115794

  10. Thurner, G. C., & Debbage, P. (2018). Molecular imaging with nanoparticles: The dwarf actors revisited 10 years later. Histochemistry and Cell Biology, 150(6), 733–794. doi.org/10.1007/s00418-018-1753-y

  11. Valagiannopoulos, C. A., & Alitalo, P. (2012). Electromagnetic cloaking of PEC cylinders with a single isotropic and homogeneous layer. In Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (pp. 1–2). IEEE. doi.org/10.1109/APS.2012.6348712

  12. Wang, L., Li, Z., Shen, S., & Wong, T.-S. (2024). Geometric design of antireflective leafhopper brochosomes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(14), e2312700121. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2312700121

  13. Wu, W., Mao, Q., Ye, Z., et al. (2025). Brochosomes as an antireflective camouflage coating for leafhoppers. eLife. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.99639.2