Flat lens (near IR) made out of Si nano pillars, no chromatic aberations

[RoGeorge]

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-revolutionary-ultra-thin-meta-lens-enables-full-color.html

[Mechatrommer]

do they forget pinhole camera? that costs zero cent and zero machinery to build? or the cheap easily manufactured small smartphone lens? compare with those, not the fast lenses.

[RoGeorge]

The main problem with the pinhole camera is that the area of the pinhole is very small, so only a small fraction of the incoming light is captured. To cope with the faint light coming from the pinhole, the photographer requires either very bright illumination of the subject, or very sensitive sensors, or very long exposure times.

That is why we have lenses: a lens is "harvesting" the light from a much bigger area when compared to a pinhole, so a photo-detector will have a much easier job with capturing the image.

[Vipitis]

1.2-1.7 micron. So really short wave, and barely thermal.

But I do like advancements in lens technology. Optics can have far more shapes that just being round as well.

[Mechatrommer]

The main problem with the pinhole...  the photographer requires...

thank you very much for photography 101... well, if the main intention is to eliminate chromatic aberration, i think they failed miserably...



and there is no mentioning in the video that the silicone lens can gather light several magnitude better than pinhole. so imho, they should go back to their cave and improve further before they report anything. one application though so far that i can see is maybe they can further miniaturize a camera if that thing doesnt have focal distance and can be glued to sensor side by side.

by the way... here is from chromatic aberrated lens, copyrighted (resized) picture courtesy of Seraya Studio, one of my favorite (2nd attachment) enjoy...

[Berni]

The lens is designed to work from 1200nm to 1700nm and that only covers infrared light while visible light is from about 600nm to 400nm. It seams to also work for visible light in that demo but it looses the low chromatic aboration feature. But i'm guessing they are aiming to make the technology also work for visible light in the future.