Camera lenses might look radically different in a couple years thanks to a new technology developed by a group of physicists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
Using a very thin wafer of silicon the scientists have created a flat lens that is only 60 nanometers thick and does away with the normal aspherical glass we’re used to seeing on most cameras.
“Our website almost went down because of all the hits,” says Federico Capasso, the principal investigator on the project and a Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at SEAS. “People are seeing the revolutionary potential.”
Aspheric, or curved glass, is currently used to make camera lenses because the curvature of the glass is needed in order to refract, or bend the light coming from many angles in such a way that it all ends up at the same focal point, be that a slice of 35mm film or an electric sensor.
via Wired
Image: A new ultrathin, flat lens focuses light without imparting the optical distortions of conventional lenses.
Artist’s rendition courtesy of Francesco Aieta.
