An Optic Revolution

Flat lens that magnifies nanoscale objects and gives sharper focus compared to top-end microscope lenses could revolutionise optics, inventors claim.

09:13 08 June 2016

A team of US inventors claims that a 2mm device made of paint whitener on a silver glass could revolutionise optics. The device, which is finer than a human hair, can magnify nanoscale objects and gives sharper focus when compared to top-end microscope lenses.

 

Instead of curved disks, the device is made of a thin layer of transparent quartz coated in millions of tiny pillars, each interacts strongly with light.

 

Federico Capasso of Harvard University, the senior author of a report on the new lens, said: "In my opinion, this technology will be game-changing," 

 

"The quality of our images is actually better than with a state-of-the-art objective lens. I think it is no exaggeration to say that this is potentially revolutionary."

 

He added: "The conventional fabrication of shaped lenses depends on moulding and essentially goes back to 19th Century technology.

 

"But our lenses, being planar, can be fabricated in the same foundries that make computer chips. So all of a sudden the factories that make integrated circuits can make our lenses."