All-Glass 100 mm Diameter Visible Metalens for Imaging the Cosmos.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38230651.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acsnano.3c09462 and PMC identifier 10832996.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Metasurfaces, optics made from subwavelength-scale nanostructures, have been limited to millimeter-sizes by the scaling challenge of producing vast numbers of precisely engineered elements over a large area. In this study, we demonstrate an all-glass 100 mm diameter metasurface lens (metalens) comprising 18.7 billion nanostructures that operates in the visible spectrum with a fast <i>f</i>-number (<i>f</i>/1.5, NA = 0.32) using deep-ultraviolet (DUV) projection lithography. Our work overcomes the exposure area constraints of lithography tools and demonstrates that large metasurfaces are commercially feasible. Additionally, we investigate the impact of various fabrication errors on the imaging quality of the metalens, several of which are specific to such large area metasurfaces. We demonstrate direct astronomical imaging of the Sun, the Moon, and emission nebulae at visible wavelengths and validate the robustness of such metasurfaces under extreme environmental thermal swings for space applications.