Lens technologies have advanced across all scales, from digital cameras and high bandwidth in fiber optics to the LIGO lab instruments. Now, a new lens technology that could be produced using standard computer-chip technology is emerging and could replace the bulky layers and complex geometries of traditional curved lenses.
Flat lenses, unlike their traditional counterparts, are relatively lightweight, based on optical nanomaterials known as metasurfaces. When the subwavelength nanostructures of a metasurface form certain repeated patterns, they mimic the complex curvatures that refract light, but with less bulk and an improved ability to focus light with reduced distortion. However, most of these nanostructured devices are static, which limits their functionality.
Federico Capasso, an applied physicist at Harvard University who pioneered metalens technology, and Daniel Lopez, group leader of nanofabrication and devices at Argonne National Laboratory and an early developer of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), brainstormed about adding motion capabilities like fast scanning and beam steering to metalenses for new applications.
Capasso and Lopez developed a device that integrates mid-infrared spectrum metalenses onto MEMS. The researchers report their findings this week in APL Photonics, from AIP Publishing.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-02-mems-chips-metatlenses.html#jCp
Lens technologies have advanced across all scales, from digital cameras and high bandwidth in fiber optics to the LIGO lab instruments. Now, a new lens technology that could be produced using standard computer-chip technology is emerging and could replace the bulky layers and complex geometries of traditional curved lenses.
Flat lenses, unlike their traditional counterparts, are relatively lightweight, based on optical nanomaterials known as metasurfaces. When the subwavelength nanostructures of a metasurface form certain repeated patterns, they mimic the complex curvatures that refract light, but with less bulk and an improved ability to focus light with reduced distortion. However, most of these nanostructured devices are static, which limits their functionality.
Federico Capasso, an applied physicist at Harvard University who pioneered metalens technology, and Daniel Lopez, group leader of nanofabrication and devices at Argonne National Laboratory and an early developer of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), brainstormed about adding motion capabilities like fast scanning and beam steering to metalenses for new applications.
Capasso and Lopez developed a device that integrates mid-infrared spectrum metalenses onto MEMS. The researchers report their findings this week in APL Photonics, from AIP Publishing.