Flat lens promises possible revolution in optics

BBC News Services ^ | 3 June 2016 | Roland Pease

[Utilizer]

A flat lens made of paint whitener on a sliver of glass could revolutionise optics, according to its US inventors.

Just 2mm across and finer than a human hair, the tiny device can magnify nanoscale objects and gives a sharper focus than top-end microscope lenses.

It is the latest example of the power of metamaterials, whose novel properties emerge from their structure.

Shapes on the surface of this lens are smaller than the wavelength of light involved: a thousandth of a millimetre.

"In my opinion, this technology will be game-changing," said Federico Capasso of Harvard University, the senior author of a report on the new lens which appears in the journal Science.

The lens is quite unlike the curved disks of glass familiar from cameras and binoculars. Instead, it is made of a thin layer of transparent quartz coated in millions of tiny pillars, each just tens of nanometres across and hundreds high.

[Utilizer]

Just when you thought the limits of optics capability had been reached...

[headstamp 2]

Glass lens manufacturers may be having their Kodak moment soon.

[umgud]

My great grandfather was a lens grinder until he fell into the machine and made a spectacle of himself.

[rightwingcrazy]

“Shapes on the surface of this lens are smaller than the wavelength of light involved: a thousandth of a millimetre.”

I wonder why they chose to work in the near-infrared, rather than the visible.

[NautiNurse]

Does this mean my coke-bottle eyeglasses may become obsolete?

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

After the fall did he have a “glassy stare?”

[Utilizer]

I wonder why they chose to work in the near-infrared, rather than the visible.

Longer wavelength, easier to get smaller parts into as opposed to shorter wavelengths harder to divide into.

[Bob]

Yeah, that’s terrible. That sounds a lot like what happened to my uncle. He was fired from the pickle plant for putting his penis into the pickle slicer while on a break. In all fairness, though, they did fire her too.

[Hot Tabasco]

Does this mean my coke-bottle eyeglasses may become obsolete?

Not as long as kids still enjoy frying ants........

[Moonman62]

Glass lens manufacturers may be having their Kodak moment soon.

...

I’d wait to see if this has any commercial viability. Stuff like this which shows up in the popular press usually doesn’t.

[rightwingcrazy]

If challenges remain to work the technology into the visible, they might have mentioned so in the article. The devil is in the details.

[umgud]

Now that’s funny.

[Quality_Not_Quantity]

okay, that was funny right there.

[PraiseTheLord]

Does this mean my coke-bottle eyeglasses may become obsolete?

---

Mine became obsolete when I discovered progressives — years ago. PTL!

[Bob]

I hesitated before posting since it’s such an old one. :=)

[camle]

how about scratches?

[DIRTYSECRET]

We invent it someone else makes it.

[null and void]

2mm? did they mean 2µm???

[fella]

Slave labor is so much cheaper than capitalism.

[COBOL2Java]

Yeah, that’s terrible. That sounds a lot like what happened to my uncle. He was fired from the pickle plant for putting his penis into the pickle slicer while on a break.

A bris too far...