The possible military uses for this new adaptive technology are extensive.

The ink contained within the spray embodies electromagnetic components that can adjust their electrical change through voltage-control. In addition to doing the same work as whip antennas and radar arrays, the ink could also help military vehicles gain stealth by steering enemy radar waves away, the publication reported.

This stealth spray is anticipated to be flexible enough to be applied onto any surface.

Raytheon, the sponsor of the UMass-Lowell lab, have stated that the spray can also do, “the same work as whip antennas and radar arrays.” The spray on stealth’s principle application will most likely lay in its ability to deflect enemy radar.

“Researchers at a Raytheon-sponsored lab at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, say they have a solution: a new “functional ink” they have used to print devices that can be tuned to generate or detect radio waves of specific frequencies, an essential capability of radar. Radar systems work by transmitting radio waves and then detecting the signals that return after the waves hit an object in their path.”

The new ink is key to printing a specific type of capacitor called a voltage-variable capacitor, or varactor. The researchers believe theirs is the first all-printed varactor, an essential electrical component of certain tunable electronic devices used in military radar systems as well as automobile collision-avoidance systems and cell-phone towers.”

Read More: MIT Technology Review

Featured Image: An aerosol jet applies electric ink developed at the Raytheon-UMass Lowell Research Institute. The ink could someday replace radars and antennas and even help military vehicles become stealthier. – Raytheon