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Flat Lens Promises Possible Revolution In Optics (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the advances-in-optics-world dept.

An anonymous reader shares a BBC report: A flat lens made of paint whitener on a sliver of glass could revolutionize optics, according to its U.S. inventors. Just 2mm across and finer than a human hair, the tiny device can magnify nanoscale objects and gives a sharper focus than top-end microscope lenses. It is the latest example of the power of metamaterials, whose novel properties emerge from their structure. Shapes on the surface of this lens are smaller than the wavelength of light involved: a thousandth of a millimetre. "In my opinion, this technology will be game-changing," said Federico Capasso of Harvard University, the senior author of a report on the new lens which appears in the journal Science. The lens is quite unlike the curved disks of glass familiar from cameras and binoculars. Instead, it is made of a thin layer of transparent quartz coated in millions of tiny pillars, each just tens of nanometres across and hundreds high.PetaPixel has more details.

60 comments

  1. fucking flash player by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why does stupid bbc insist on flash player??? They know where the world is heading, no?

    1. Re:fucking flash player by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      It doesn't require glasses.

    2. Re:fucking flash player by Andreas+Mayer · · Score: 1, Informative

      why does stupid bbc insist on flash player??? They know where the world is heading, no?

      Change your browser's user agent to 'iPad' and videos will work without Flash.

    3. Re:fucking flash player by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why does Slashdot link to heavily biased and uninformed garbage like the BBC anyway?

    4. Re:fucking flash player by WarJolt · · Score: 1

      So why are they maintain that useless flash? Maybe someone over at the bbc is still using ie6.

  2. Alas, another solid reason to build an 18-in fab by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    From TFA

    ... "Once you have the foundry - you want a 12-inch lens? Feel free, you can make a 12-inch lens. There's no limit." ...

    The talk of building 18-in (450mm) fab has been on and off for the past 10 years or so. Because of the enormous cost involved key players involved (Intel, TSMC, Samsung, et cetera) kept on putting it on the back burner

    If this lens is what it is touted to be and that one can have full maximization of the entire area of the waffle, then an 18-in lens will be so much more better than its 12-in counterparts

    In other words, another solid reason behind the construction of the world's first 18-in fab

  3. Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sounds like they've taken Canon's Diffractive Optics to a new level. Basically, DO uses Fresnel lenses with smaller ribs. This raises the bar to nanoscale features, which should result in even less distortion and other problems. I, for one, welcome our new superzoom overlords. I'm envisioning a lightweight 16-600 that will outperform everything on the market today by a large margin....

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    1. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by AK+Marc · · Score: 0

      Yup. Came here to say that. Someone re-re-invented a 300 year old Fresnel lense.

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    2. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by boristdog · · Score: 1

      And it will be on cheap cell phones in 5 years.

      I wonder what cool applications people will come up with for it?

    3. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by QilessQi · · Score: 1

      Is it still a Fresnel lens, or is it more like the diffraction pattern you get on an exposed holographic plate?

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    4. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Loether · · Score: 1

      I'll be excited when I can trade in my bulky, heavy, expensive SLR lenses for one perfect, cheap zoom. For all of the advances in digital sensors, lens tech has been virtually unchanged. Sure they threw on some expensive nanocoatings and made the glass aspherical but at the end of the day it's still the same heavy hunk of glass your grandparents had on there SLRs in the 50s. Never heard of the canon DO... interesting stuff. I am a Nikon shooter like my father before me.

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    5. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by dgatwood · · Score: 2

      They're pretty neat, but Canon hasn't done a lot with them because of the moiré distortion in out-of-focus areas and lens flare problems. Supposedly, their newer designs are better, though I don't know to what degree.

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    6. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Canon et al. already did this by taking advantage of diffraction properties and made lighter smaller long primes lenses (their Green lens range), the lens is not smooth, it has ridges to use diffraction.

      This is probably similar except not using ridges in the glass, but rather, ridges in the "meta" material. Ie., metal arranged in a pillar formation.

      Purists probably don't want to use these because it does interfere with the raw image somewhat. If you are into scientific processing (astrophotography etc), then you probably don't want this lens, and just prefer to have pure optical diffraction or reflection.

      The bane of stopping down a lens, is ... diffraction spikes caused due to the iris or support veins. This is why you see astronomy photographs (after integration) with stars that look like crosses, some like it some hate it, I hate it.

      I would prefer they solve the diffraction spike issue when stopping down a lens or other properties, coma (spherical aberration) and/or chromatic aberration rather than add more diffraction artefacts.

    7. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by doublebackslash · · Score: 4, Informative

      It isn't the same as a Fresnel lens.
      The scale of these features are below the wavelength of light. That means that these structures interact with the electromagnetic field in a way that allows for a negative refractive index, which is impossible using conventional optics, rather than bending the light in steps like a Fresnel lens. This is more like an array of phased antennae, but small enough to work with light's high frequency. They have been doing similar things with microwaves for something like a decade or so.
      Google image search for microwave metamaterial. It will show you what sort of thing these pillars are mimicking, but on the order of millimeters instead of nanometers.

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    8. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Except it isn't a Fresnel lens. A Fresnel lens is basically slices of a lens with the bulk removed. This is good for making flat lenses but they suffer from diffraction and are rarely any good for optics as the fringing of the rings affects image quality. That's why you don't see Fresnel lenses used anywhere other than overhead projectors and stage lights where fringing is minimal. After all, if it worked well, then cameras would already be using them.

      It really is a plane of little pillars arranged in strange patterns. Supposedly these are image quality

    9. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Cameras have used Fresnel lenses. Manufacturing quality was one of the biggest problems with them, but with nano, it seems they got rid of that problem, so the lense is thin, and optical quality, but still the same basic optics solved hundreds of years ago.

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    10. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not, it is a diffractive lens, nothing new either. (If there is any innovation, it is in the manufacturing process.)
      The difference is that the wavefront is not bent by a slanted surface but by a repeated pattern at the scale of the wavelength. Essentially the wavefronts get broken up into little 'wavelets' and pieced together with a mismatched wavefront's wavelets to get a sharp angle. One consequence is of course that wavefronts of different colors won't match up in the same way, due to the different wavelengths.

    11. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They didn't ‘get rid of that problem’; they're using a completely different method of bending the light. Instead of letting a beam fall on slanted pieces of glass or plastic, they're letting it fall on a sub-wavelength structure of tiny transparent pillars, whose orientation has been calculated to bend the beam.

    12. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's important to understand just how different these meta-material optics are.
      Fresnel lenses use regular diffraction, meta-material optics are based on a NEGATIVE refractive index, which gets you around all of the focusing issues from standard positive refractive index optics.

    13. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      That's exactly the definition of a Fresnel lense. They did it with slanted material because that's all they had.

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    14. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, a Fresnel lens is defined by refraction, which is a whole different beast than diffraction. The behavior is fundamentally different as diffraction depends much more on the wavelength, is much more difficult to calculate, and can involve things like opaque structures bending light in the vicinity instead of light bending when passing through a surface.

    15. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is quite different. Imagine a magnifying glass---it's thicker in the middle but thinner on the outside, but the material it's made of is the same throughout (some sort of plastic or glass). If they used the same technology for this magnifying glass, it would instead be equally thin all around, *but* the (optical) density of the material would be greater near the middle, and the change in density is accomplished by engraving features on the lens with sizes much smaller than the wavelength.

    16. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well you came here to be wrong

    17. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by joemck · · Score: 1

      No. As I understand it, a Fresnel lens works exactly the same as a normal lens, no smaller-than-wavelength metamaterial structures involved. You merely take lateral slices of a normal lens and collapse them to form concentric rings. A Fresnel lens does not give a better image than an equivalent conventional lens. It just reduces the thickness and mass required.

      You can use a millimeter thick Fresnel lens to do what would normally need a very thick and heavy conventional lens.

    18. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by doublebackslash · · Score: 1

      I didn't say that a Fresnel lens did. My meaning was that the one in the article is NOT a Fresnel lens. It is wrong to compare it to one.

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    19. Re:Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new level by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The current VR headsets uses fresnel or hybrid fresnel lenses.

  4. progress toward ASICs on demand by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    one of the limitations of maskless lithography is getting a sharp enough lens. an advancement like this could push the limitations from hundreds of nanometers down to what's on par with modern fabrication technologies. being able to cheaply prototype chips before mass production would be a HUGE advancement for the IC development field. it also moves us closer to a tabletop computer manufacturing lab.

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  5. Doesn't help diameter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This might be capable of making lenses thinner, but you still can't reduce the aperture of a lens without reducing the resolution of your image within the bounds of known physics... so don't get your hopes up about microminiaturized telescopes.

  6. Flat Chest Promises Possible Revolution In Hawtnes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Disclaimer: I love em, and so should you. 3

  7. Re: Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new leve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Enlarged dick pics? Not even kidding...

  8. solar energy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder if this could be used to make cheap, light-weight lenses to concentrate sunlight for PV solar energy.

  9. Fresnel writ "small"? by JoeDuncan · · Score: 1

    Hold on a sec.

    How is this new?!?

    Isn't this just a Fresnel lens writ "small"?

  10. Monocrhomatic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The downside with this type of lens is they are monochromatic. Visual light covers and entire octave (wave length doubles). It is very hard to make a meta material lens that has that big of a range. The actual science paper talks about this and describes how to make a lens in red, blue and green. These lenses need object to be illuminated by lasers. This is amazing stuff, but we are a long ways from cell phone camera lenses, which are talked about in the science "journalism" articles.

    1. Re:Monocrhomatic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Chromatic aberation is the result of THREE wavelengths, red, green and blue not aligning at the focal point.

      All they would have to do is work with THREE wavelengths to achieve full colour just as triplet optical telescopes use to remove CA.

  11. MMMMM... by avandesande · · Score: 1

    Telescopes!

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    1. Re:MMMMM... by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      Hubble 2.0

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    2. Re:MMMMM... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With spectacles... err corrective optics.

  12. What numerical method was used? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pay-per-view article.. I'm curious, does anyone know if they used FDTD or FEM methods for the design phase of this lens?

    1. Re:What numerical method was used? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The paper: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1605/1605.02248.pdf

  13. Re: Canon's Diffractive Optics taken to a new leve by boristdog · · Score: 2

    Women can respond to unsolicited dick picks with "I see you have one of those cool metalenses on your phone!"

  14. Re:Alas, another solid reason to build an 18-in fa by avandesande · · Score: 1

    There is no need though for really large lenses though, at least for imaging. You can actually cluster a bunch of smaller lenses quite easily by etching the correct geometry into each individual lenses.

    --
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  15. "A thousandth of a millimetre?" by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

    That's still larger than the wavelength of visible light (about 400 to 800 nm.)

    A thousandth of a micrometre ... yes, that's smaller than visible light.

    The error is in TFS and TFA.

    --
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  16. Promises, promises... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    Flat Lens Promises Possible Revolution In Optics

    Anyone can promise possible anything...

    These are real, and they’re already generating exceptional results.

    Great. But no pics of these exceptional results?

    --
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    1. Re:Promises, promises... by Cytotoxic · · Score: 1

      That was my thought as well. Really nice electron micrographs of your new meta-material lens... but no images produced by the lens. Presumably because it isn't ready to actually produce a useable image yet. Because if you had a lens capable of producing better images than the best microscope lenses, you'd take a picture with the best oil immersion lens you can find and then take the same image with your lens. A nice side by side comparison where we'd all go, "Wow, that is better!!"

      So we are at the "look at this new technology I've developed" stage. Which is really cool, but not worthy of the hype-filled headlines or rampant speculation about space telescopes in the comments.

  17. actually (meta-material-style) optics by slew · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...but still the same basic optics solved hundreds of years ago.

    Actually, no. More details.

    The short story of what is different is described in their paper (preprint here)...

    Although visible planar lenses can be realized by diffractive components, high NA and efficiency are not attainable because their constituent structures are of wavelength scale that precludes an accurate phase profile..... To maximize the polarization conversion efficiency, the nanofins should operate as halfwaveplates. This is achieved due to the birefringence arising from the asymmetric cross section of nanofins with appropriately designed height, width, and length

    The new idea (well not new, but meta-material approach) is that for each x,y position on the lens, a nanofin is positioned and rotated so that a localized "half-wave-plate" effect created by birefringence of the nanofin crossection modifies the phase profile of incident circularly polarized light to that which propagation through a spherical lens would have produced: All without a refractive component. A fresnel-like lens uses a small refraction (lens) element instead of a nano-sized half-wave plate to accomplish bending, but refraction requires an interface, and you can't make that interface too small without diffractive effects.

    The catch? Chromatic aberration will be much worse than a traditional lens because the phase profile is only correct for one wavelength (traditional materials also have a index of refraction that changes with wavelength, but it isn't strictly a linearly proportional geometric effect like rotating nanofins). This new technique would work fine for most scientific purposes where you have monochromatic light, but taking a full color picture with this type of lens might take quite a bit of dsp-post-processing to look reasonable.

    1. Re:actually (meta-material-style) optics by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      RGB lenses, then? With recombination, either at the sensor or in post-processing with multiple sensors?

      We've had monochromatic sensors before and used them to make quite high quality color images.

      Most Bayer sensors are monochromatic with filters; for a true RGB sensor, meaning, a cell that responds to all three spectral peaks, Foveon has a three-level cell that responds to different spectra at one focal location (uses depth in the cell IIRC.) But separate photosites have been pretty much the goto tech for quite some time now. My Canon 6D uses it; it takes very good images, talking about the sensor only. Chromatic abberation in Canon lenses is terrible though, for my use, which is astrophotography.

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    2. Re:actually (meta-material-style) optics by daaxix · · Score: 1

      Yes, this is more correct. Essentially these new structures are modeled just like phased antenna arrays and the like for microwave rf, radio, etc., just at optical frequencies. This makes the manufacture difficult to realize because of the size of the structures required, but it is really not anything different from antenna engineering.

    3. Re:actually (meta-material-style) optics by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      The general concept is 100% the same. The physics details change slightly because of the nano scale. "flat lense" is old. "flat lense with nano" is the same thing, but different.

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    4. Re:actually (meta-material-style) optics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see many useful uses. Polarizers, CCD's, electricity generation. Game changer indeed.

  18. Flat lens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'd love to see a good zoom lens that fits in a phone. Digital zoom is worthless. I can enlarge and crop an already taken photo for the same result.

  19. It's not a lense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's a columnating filter.

    1. Re:It's not a lense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a columnating filter.

      Heh, I see what you did there...

  20. Re:Alas, another solid reason to build an 18-in fa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Wafer", not "waffle", numbnuts.

  21. Re:Alas, another solid reason to build an 18-in fa by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Light gathering. Definitely a good reason.

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  22. Why didn't Mother Nature evolve this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seems like it ought to be right up her alley.

  23. Re:Alas, another solid reason to build an 18-in fa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love waffles. An 18 waffle sounds great. Why would you waste a good waffle on making some stupid lens?

  24. media dumbing down their information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why use a vague term like 'paint whitener' instead of a clear one like 'titanium dioxide'?

  25. Re:Alas, another solid reason to build an 18-in fa by WarJolt · · Score: 1

    The diameter of the lens allows you to collect more light, so how does a tiny glitter sized lens collect enough light to be usable? I'm a little bit naive when it comes to the physics, but it seems to me that considering there's less light on the focal plane those sensors will have issues with noise.Isn't that why professional lenses haven't really changed in size decades?

  26. Surveillance nightmare by mileshigh · · Score: 1

    Undetectable hi-res surveillance cameras the size of a flea just got one giant leap closer to reality.