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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.

2 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. 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

  2. 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.