Researchers Combine Piezoelectric and Metasurfaces to Create Lens With Tunable Focus

upstart writes:

Researchers combine piezoelectric thin film and metasurfaces to create lens with tunable focus: Compact, inexpensive tunable lenses could be useful for portable medical diagnostics, miniature cameras and more:

"This type of low-power, ultra-compact varifocal lens could be used in a wide range of sensor and imaging technologies where system size, weight and cost are important," said research project leader Christopher Dirdal from SINTEF Smart Sensors and Microsystems in Norway. "In addition, introducing precision tunability to metasurfaces opens up completely new ways to manipulate light."

Dirdal and colleagues describe the new technology in the Optica Publishing Group journal Optics Letters. To change focal length, a voltage is applied over lead zirconate titanate (PZT) membranes causing them to deform. This, in turn, shifts the distance between two metasurface lenses.

"Our novel approach offers a large displacement between the metasurface lenses at high speed and using low voltages," said Dirdal. "Compared to state-of-the-art devices, we demonstrated twice the out-of-plane displacement at a quarter of the voltage."

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