Giuseppe Strangi views a metalens array
Case Western Reserve scientists, collaborators at Harvard and Italian university Unical, aim to ‘revolutionize optics’ by combining nanostructured metasurfaces with liquid crystal technology
For more than 500 years, humans have mastered the art of refracting light by shaping glass into lenses, then bending or combining those lenses to amplify and clarify images either close-up and far-off.
But in the last decade or so, a group led by scientist Federico Capasso at Harvard University has begun to transform the field of optics by engineering flat optics metasurfaces, employing an array of millions of tiny microscopically thin and transparent quartz pillars to diffract and mold the flow of light in much the same way as a glass lens, but without the aberrations that naturally limit the glass.
The technology was selected as among the Top 10 Emerging Technologies by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2019, which remarked that these increasingly smaller, clearer lenses would soon begin to be seen in camera phones, sensors, optical-fiber lines and medical-imaging devices, such as endoscopes.
“Making the lenses used by mobile phones, computers and other electronic devices smaller has been beyond the capabilities of traditional glass cutting and glass curving techniques,” according to the WEF. “…These tiny, thin, flat lenses could replace existing bulky glass lenses and allow further miniaturization in sensors and medical imaging devices.”
Making metalenses ‘reconfigurable’
Now, Case Western Reserve University physics professor Giuseppe Strangi and collaborators at Harvard have taken a step toward making these “metalenses” even more useful—by making them reconfigurable.
They did this by harnessing nanoscale forces to infiltrate liquid crystals between those microscopic pillars, allowing them to shape and diffract the light in completely new ways—“tuning” the focusing power, Strangi said.
Liquid crystals are especially useful because can be manipulated thermally, electrically, magnetically or optically, which creates the potential for the flexible or reconfigurable lenses.
“We believe that this holds the promise to revolutionize optics as we know it since the 16th century,” said Strangi, whose Nanoplasm Lab at Case Western Reserve investigates “extreme optics” and the “interaction of light and matter at nanoscale,” among other matters.
Until recently, once a glass lens was shaped into a rigid curve, it could only bend the light in one way, unless combined with other lenses or physically moved, Strangi said.
Metalenses changed that, since they allow to engineer the wavefront by controlling phase, amplitude and polarization of the light.
Now, by controlling the liquid crystal, the researchers have been able move these new class of metalenses towards new scientific and technological endeavors to generate reconfigurable structured light .
“This is just the first step, but there are many possibilities for using these lenses, and we have already been contacted by companies interested in this technology,” Strangi said.
The paper announcing the breakthrough was published in early August by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Strangi collaborated with several other researchers in the United States and Europe, including fellow Case Western Reserve researchers Andrew Lininger and Jonathan Boyd; Giovanna Palermo of Universita’ della Calabria in Italy; and Capasso, Alexander Zhu and Joon-Suh Park of the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University.
Lininger said part of the problem with current applications of metasurfaces is that their shape is fixed at the point of production, but “by enabling reconfigurability in the metasurface, these limitations can be overcome.”
Capasso, who pioneered the flat optics research field and in 2014 first published research on metalenses, credited Strangi for the idea to infiltrate the metalenses with liquid crystals and said this innovation represents a step toward even bigger things.
“Our ability to reproducibly infiltrate with liquid crystals state-of-the art metalenses made of over 150 million nanoscale diameter glass pillars and to significantly change their focusing properties is a portent of the exciting science and technology I expect to come out of reconfigurable flat optics in the future,” Capasso said.
The Latest Updates from Bing News & Google News
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Reconfigurable flat optics
- Exponential Growth In Linear Time: The End Of Moore’s Law
Moore’s Law states the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double about every two years. This law, coined by Intel and Fairchild founder [Gordon Moore] has been a truism since it ...
- Ciena's (CIEN) Optics Solutions Used by Brazil's Mob Telecom
Prior to that, Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platforms with WL5e powered by WaveLogic Ai transponders and a 6500 flexible grid ROADM (reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers) line system were being ...
- With 6.71% CAGR, Aircraft Antenna Market Size Worth USD 631.1 Million by 2029 | Fortune Business Insights™
Aircraft Antenna Market Report Scope & Segmentation: Report Attribute Details Market ... The regional outlook is mainly attributed to the application of reconfigurable liquid antennas and air traffic.
- Meet Venus Optics’ new $299 10mm F4 ‘Cookie’ lens for APS-C mirrorless cameras
Venus Optics has announced its newest lens, a $299 10mm F4 rectilinear 'Cookie' APS-C lens that's barely larger than a few body caps stacked on top one another.
- Webb: Why NASA’s New ‘Ultimate Space Telescope’ Means The Future Is Flat-Packed
JWST is passively cooled by a kite-shaped sunshield membrane. Always positioned between the telescope’s optics and the Sun, it comprises five super-thin layers of Kapton E with aluminum and ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Reconfigurable flat optics
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Flat optics
- Kopin (KOPN) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript
Q2 2022 Earnings Call Aug 02, 2022, 8:30 a.m. ET Welcome to the Kopin second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being ...
- ‘Magic’ optical illusion appears to defy gravity — unless you can figure it out
This ball is on a roll. In this optical illusion, you’ll see a hand place a metal ball at the bottom of what looks like an ordinary slide. However, it immediately rolls uphill, seemingly ...
- IFMA Releases 2023 Foodservice Industry Forecast at Marketing & Sales Conference
The International Foodservice Manufacturers Association (IFMA) released its 2023 Foodservice Industry and Segment Projections today at its annual Marketing & Sales Conference. The forecast, which is ...
- Surging Photonics Industry to Set Stage for Photonic Packaging Market Growth, States Fact.MR
According to Fact.MR, a market research and competitive intelligence provider, the global photonic packaging market is estimated at US$ 452.3 billion in ...
- New For 2022: Smith & Wesson M&P M2.0 Compact Optics-Ready Spec Series Pistol Kit
Smith & Wesson announced the third iteration of its M&P Spec Series, the M&P M2.0 Compact Optics-Ready in gray, along with a 4" folding knife and challenge coin included with the kit.