Phones and drones will soon have cameras as thin as a hair

Scientists have developed a new multilayer metal lens design that promises to create a new generation of cheap, lightweight, and powerful portable optics for phones, drones, and satellites.

Researchers have developed a multi-layer metal lens design that can converge multiple colors at once, breaking the fundamental limitations of single-layer lenses - Photo: Optics Express

Instead of relying on just one layer of metamaterial, the team stacked multiple layers, overcoming the fundamental limitation of metal lenses in converging multiple wavelengths of light at once.

The algorithm-based method has created sophisticated nanostructures in the shape of four leaves, propellers or squares, which offer higher efficiency, scalability and independence from light polarization.

“This design has many features that make it suitable for practical devices,” said Joshua Jordaan, lead author from the Australian National University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transform Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS). “It is easy to fabricate due to its low geometric aspect ratio, the layers can be fabricated separately and then assembled, it is polarization independent, and it has the potential to be scaled up using existing semiconductor technology.”

Metal lenses are only a fraction of the thickness of a human hair, many times thinner than traditional optical lenses. They can create focal lengths that conventional lenses cannot achieve.

The team initially tried to focus multiple wavelengths using a single layer but ran into physical limitations. Turning to multilayer structures, they used an inverse optimization algorithm to find suitable metasurface shapes, based on dual electromagnetic resonance (Huygens resonance), which increased precision and eased mass production.

These nanostructures are about 300 nanometers high and 1,000 nanometers wide, enough to create an optical phase map, allowing light to be focused into arbitrary patterns. “We can even focus different wavelengths into different locations to create a color router,” Jordaan said.

However, the multilayer approach is currently only feasible for up to about 5 wavelengths, due to the need to ensure the structure is large enough for the longest wavelength without causing diffraction at shorter wavelengths.

Within that limit, the team believes that metallic lenses could be a big boon for mobile imaging systems. “Our design is ideal for drones or Earth observation satellites, as we’ve tried to make them as compact and lightweight as possible,” Jordaan says.

The research results were published in the journal Optics Express .

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Source: https://tuoitre.vn/dien-thoai-drone-sap-co-camera-mong-nhu-soi-toc-2025092508534341.htm