The tiny multicolored metallites could revolutionize drone and phones cameras

The engineers have created multilayer metals which concentrate several wavelengths. The design could revolutionize laptop optical devices.

Researchers have introduced a new way of creating multicolored lenses that could open the way to a generation of compact, low cost and high performance optics for portable technologies such as drones and smartphones.

According to Mr. Joshua Jordaan, principal author of the study of the Research School of Physics at the Australian National University and the Center of Arc Excellence for Transformer Meta-Optic Systems (TMOS), the design uses stacked layers of metamaterial. These layers make it possible to concentrate several wavelengths from an unproclaved light source through a wide diameter, approaching one of the main drawbacks of traditional metallites.

“Our design has many features that make it applicable to practical devices.”

“It is easy to make because it has a low appearance ratio and each layer can be made individually, then wrapped together, it is also insensitive to polarization, and is potentially scalable via mature semiconductive nanofabrication platforms,” ​​said Jordaan.

The project was led by researchers from Friedrich Schiller Jena University in Germany as part of the International Meta-Aactive Research Training Group. The document declaring their conception has recently been published in Express Optics.

Overcome the limits of unique layers

Metalists are just a tiny fraction of the width of a hair, which makes it much thinner than traditional lenses. They can also be designed with features such as focal lengths that would be inaccessible using standard optical conceptions.

Mr. Joshua Jordaan explained that the team had first tried to concentrate several wavelengths using a single layer, but this approach quickly encountered fundamental physical limitations.

“It turns out that the maximum delay in a group achievable in a single metasurface has physical limitations, and these in turn have set up higher limits on the product of digital opening, physical diameter and operating bandwidth.”

“To work on the range of wavelengths we needed, only one layer should either have a very small diameter, which would overcome the purpose of the design, or essentially a digital opening so weak that it hardly concentrates light,” he said.

“We realized that we needed a more complex structure, which then led to a multilayer approach.”

Multilayed design breakthrough

Once the researchers moved to a design with several layers of metalaux, they took up the challenge using an reverse design algorithm that was based on the optimization of the form. This approach has enabled a high degree of flexibility thanks to an extensive configuration.

They ordered the algorithm to identify metasurface geometries which, with a single wavelength, would generate resonances in electric and magnetic dipoles, called Huygens resonances. By taking advantage of these resonances, the team has progressed beyond previous efforts by other groups, producing metalaux conceptions which were insensitive to polarization and more tolerant to manufacturing variations – an essential step towards the production of scale for industrial use.

Unexpected forms and applications

The optimization routine has created a library of metamaterial elements in a surprising range of shapes, such as rounded squares, four -leaf and propergiers.

These tiny shapes, about 300 nm high and 1000 nm wide, lasted the entire phase phase range, from zero to two, allowing the team to create a phase gradient card to obtain an arbitrary focus model – although they initially target a simple ring structure of a conventional lens.

“We could, for example, concentrate different wavelengths in different places to create a color router,” said Jordaan.

However, the multilayer approach is limited to a maximum of around five different wavelengths, said Jordaan.

“The problem is that you need structures large enough to resonate with the longest wavelength, without spreading shorter wavelengths,” he said.

Future user uses

In these constraints, Mr. Jordaan said that the ability to make metallites to collect a lot of light will be a boon for future portable imaging systems.

“The metallites we have designed would be ideal for drones or terrestrial observation satellites because we have tried to make them as small and light as possible,” he said.

Reference: “Design of Huygens’ multi -layer metasurfaces for the wavelength and polarization of large region” by Joshua Jordaan, Isabelle Staude, Dragomir Neshev and Alexander E. Minovich, August 10, 2025, Express Optics.
Two: 10.1364 / OE.564328

Funding: Australian Research Council

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