In this podcast episode, MRS Bulletin’s Laura Leay interviews Coskun Kocabas from The University of Manchester in the UK about his development of a metamaterial that can tailor thermal emission. Rather than using a periodic system, which most topological materials employ, his research team borrowed a concept from laser design and created an optical cavity using a dielectric medium sandwiched between two layers that act as mirrors: a metal substrate and a top layer of platinum. The top layer serves as a thermal emitter, and the thickness of the top layer defines the topological property that regulates thermal emissivity. This work was published in a recent issue of Science.