We present our latest developments and results in making meta optical elements (MOE) (also known as metalenses). MOEs are prototyped by electron beam lithography (EBL) and mass produced by nanoimprint lithography (NIL) ensuring a fast route from development phase to final products compared to DUV based supply chains. Furthermore, NIL has no constraints on meta-atom geometries (size, shape, and location) enabling the best performing metalenses. As a demonstrator a complete near-IR camera module is built using a 940 nm single metalens (1M) and a NIR sensor. Figure 4 shows and image recorded by such a near-IR imaging system. The recorded image shows excellent resolution all the way to the edge and is comparable to images captured with a multi-element refractive lens system. In general MOE lenses have significantly better image quality with a wide field of view, low F-number, high MTF, and high relative illumination, all at a low total track length. NIL Technology is designing, prototyping, assembling, and bringing up mass production of MOEs.
For more than a decade, camera lenses used in smartphones and other products have not seen revolutionary changes. Lenses are still made with multiple bulky refractive lenses or lens elements stacked on top of each other. NIL Technology is on a mission to bring revolutionary changes to smartphone cameras and sensors by significantly reducing the size and complexity of these lens systems.
Besides MOEs NIL Technology is also offering customized solutions and mass production of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) and microlens arrays (MLAs) and all three technologies can be combined in hybrid solutions when applicable. Furthermore, we supply masters for surface relief waveguides for augmented reality (AR).
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