“This technology is potentially revolutionary
because it works in the visible spectrum, which means it has the capacity to
replace lenses in all kinds of devices, from microscopes to cameras, to
displays and cell phones. In the near future, metalenses will be manufactured
on a large scale at a small fraction of the cost of conventional lenses, using
the foundries that mass produce microprocessors and memory chips.”
Professor of
applied physics and electrical engineering at Harvard University, Dr Federico
Capasso, commenting on the developement of metalenses using Titanium dioxide
What would happen if a nanomaterial and a fresnel
lens had children?
You'd get this metalenses as developed by researcher
at Harvard University as described in “New
'Metamaterial Lens' is 100,000-times thinner than conventional Glass Optics”,
published June 3, 2016 by Hillary Grigonis, Digitaltrends.
What the Dr Federico Capasso and his research team
at Harvard University did is quite remarkable and is deserving of a nomination
for the Nobel Prize in Physics, at the very least. In fact, it’s similar to the
work of Dr. Chunlei Guo's of University of Rochester who used lasers to make
metallic surfaces hydrophobic as explained in my blog article
entitled “How
Dr. Chunlei Guo's of University of Rochester makes Hydrophobic Metal Surfaces
using Lasers”.
So how does a metalens differ from an ordinary lens?
Harvard
University's metalenses - Titanium dioxide Nanoscale Lego Bricks on a Field of
Quartz
It differs in one major way; weight.
Dr Federico Capasso and his research team at Harvard
University used a high powered free electrons laser to carve a stonehenge-like
structure out of Titanium dioxide on the surface of layer of transparent quartz
as described in “A
Camera Lens Breakthrough Could See Smartphones Outperforming DSLRs”,
published 03-06-2016 by Andrew Liszewski, Gizmodo.
Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) is the same
substance used in the construction of the Ohio State University KAir battery
that is made of a similar nanoscale structure made up of Titanium dioxide as
described in my blog article
entitled “@OhioState's
Solar Battery - How KAir Energy Systems Solar Batteries might come to
smartphones and Laptops”.
This massive nanostructure, with blocks 600
nanometers tall, was configured in such as way as to reflect photos to a single
point. What’s more, it can focus visible light, as previous attempts at
developing nanoscale optics focused on focusing light in the Ultravoilet
spectrum.
Effectively, this is a nanoscale fresnel lens, which
at 600 nanometers thick, is 100,000 times lighter and delivers focus that's
sharper than a 55 millimetre lens.
Harvard’s
metalens breakthrough – Improved Microscope, Telescope and Smartphone Camera
Optics
This is quite a breakthrough, as lenses used in
optics applications such as in microscopes as well as astronomy and photography
needs multiple layers of glass to reduce distortions due to imperfections in
the glass. The result is that these traditional lenses tend to be very large in
size.
The potential breakthrough here is that this
metalenses can be sculpted to have multiple lenses packed into one block of
glass or other material, making is possible to have telephoto lenses made of single
flat pieces of glass or other transparent material.
Again, comparable to a Fresnel lenses, which are
typically thin lenses that have some serious magnifying power. So powerful, in fact,
that it can magnify sunlight to decompose organic material in vacuum pyrolysis
as demonstrated in my blog article
entitled “How
to upgrade your Solar Desalinator to a Solar Cooker and make a Solar Foundry
for Vacuum Pyrolysis”.
It can also improve the resolving power of smaller
reflector telescopes. This metalens can improve the reflecting power not only
of quartz but any reflective material, even making non-reflective surface
reflective via this nanoscale coating. Potentially too, this technique could be
applied to Silver Salts used in making traditional lenses to reduce
imperfections in traditional reflectors in Telescopes.
Using the same techniques use in making microchips,
expect not only smaller single lens microscopes, telescopes and Digital SLR
Cameras for photography but increased miniaturization of camera optics in
smartphones.
A sharper smartphone selfie and cheaper optics
thanks to Titanium dioxide Nanoscale Lego Bricks on a Field of Quartz!
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