Harvard researchers have developed a new lens that is said to be capable of focusing on ‘all colours of the rainbow.’ This marks as a significant transition from the conventional camera lenses made today, which are chunky, curved and are difficult to carry around.
Although the researchers successfully focused light with this lens, which they named a ‘metalens,’ but it was on an extremely small, nanoparticle scale. But its still an impressive feat, as industry giants such as Apple and Samsung are nowhere close to implementing this camera tech into their upcoming flagships.
The laboratory research was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on January 1, 2018. It states that the technology might make its way to cameras, phones, and VR headsets and allow them to tuck in large lenses that take up less space. This will allow devices to use the added room for other purposes — such as hardware and bigger batteries, or make the device more compact.
Currently, the cameras use curved lenses to focus all the incoming light simultaneously to capture some forms of visible light that have long wavelengths (red) and other much shorter (blue).
Harvard physicist Federico Capasso, the study's senior author, said “Metalenses are thin, easy to fabricate, and cost-effective. This breakthrough extends those advantages across the whole visible range of light. This is the next big step.”
These metalenses comprise of smaller ‘nanofins,’ structures that control the speed of the different types of light as they enter the essentially flat lens. Currently, the metalens might only exist in the microscopic space, but the researchers are looking at a bigger picture in the coming years — though how long still remains uncertain.
