Tiny New Lenses, Smaller Than a Hair, Could Transform Phone and Drone Cameras

alternative_right shares a report from ScienceDaily: Scientists have developed a new multi-layered metalens design that could revolutionize portable optics in devices like phones, drones, and satellites. By stacking metamaterial layers instead of relying on a single one, the team overcame fundamental limits in focusing multiple wavelengths of light. Their algorithm-driven approach produced intricate nanostructures shaped like clovers, propellers, and squares, enabling improved performance, scalability, and polarization independence. [...] Mr Joshua Jordaan, from the Research School of Physics at the Australian National University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS), said the ability to make metalenses to collect a lot of light will be a boon for future portable imaging systems. "The metalenses we have designed would be ideal for drones or earth-observation satellites, as we've tried to make them as small and light as possible," he said. The findings have been published in the journal Optics Express.

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