Lenses that see it all
Nature Materials
December 21, 2009
The creation of a lens that can image light from an entire hemisphere onto a flat surface is reported online this week in Nature Materials. The finding could in future prove useful in the development of detectors and cameras.
Optical lenses, by design, can only magnify light coming in from one direction. However, through careful engineering of light propagation through an artificial medium ― a metamaterial ― this restriction has been overcome. Metamaterials allow the complete and deliberate control of light propagation, and therefore considerably expand the capabilities of optical instruments beyond what is possible with glasses.
Nathan Kundtz and David Smith created a metamaterial lens that captures light from angles up to 180° and projects it onto a surface. Combined with a camera chip attached to this flat surface, such a lens can image and transmit an entire hemisphere with a single camera shot. The present lens is designed to work in the microwave region, although the design can in future be scaled down so as to be used with visible light.
doi: 10.1038/nmat2610
Research highlights
-
Jun 11
Engineering: Earmuffs measure blood alcohol levels through the skinScientific Reports
-
Jun 10
Computer science: Artificial intelligence speeds up computer chip designNature
-
Jun 2
Physics: Modelling improvements to ride-sharing adoptionNature Communications
-
May 27
Physics: Universal patterns in the way people moveNature
-
May 20
Astrophysics: Nickel detected in 2I/Borisov and comets from our Solar SystemNature
-
May 4
Biomedical engineering: Sound compression in hearing aids may make them worseNature Biomedical Engineering
