Large-scale achromatic flat lens by light frequency-domain coherence optimization

• DOI: 10.1038/s41377-022-01024-y
• Publication Date: 2022-11-11T03:03:02Z
• Authors: Xingjian Xiao; Yunwei Zhao; Xin Ye; Chen Chen; Xinmou Lu; Yansen Rong; Junhong Deng; Guixin Li; Shining Zhu; Tao Li
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 03 medical and health sciences; Applied optics. Photonics; QC350-467; Optics. Light; Article; TA1501-1820

AbstractFlat lenses, including metalens and diffractive lens, have attracted increasing attention due to their ability to miniaturize the imaging devices. However, realizing a large scale achromatic flat lens with high performance still remains a big challenge. Here, we developed a new framework in designing achromatic multi-level diffractive lenses by light coherence optimization, which enables the implementation of large-scale flat lenses under non-ideal conditions. As results, a series achromatic polymer lenses with diameter from 1 to 10 mm are successfully designed and fabricated. The subsequent optical characterizations substantially validate our theoretical framework and show relatively good performance of the centimeter-scale achromatic multi-level diffractive lenses with a super broad bandwidth in optical wavelengths (400–1100 nm). After comparing with conventional refractive lens, this achromatic lens shows significant advantages in white-light imaging performance, implying a new strategy in developing practical planar optical devices.