Artificial eye: Researchers combine metalens with an artificial muscle

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed an adaptive metalens, that is essentially a flat, electronically controlled artificial eye.

Artificial eye automatically stretches to simultaneously focus and correct astigmatism and image shift.

The research is published in Science Advances.

To build the artificial eye, the researchers first needed to scale-up the metalens.

Prior metalenses were about the size of a single piece of glitter. They focus light and eliminate spherical aberrations through a dense pattern of nanostructures, each smaller than a wavelength of light.

The adaptive metalens focuses light rays onto an image sensor. An electrical signal controls the shape of the metalens to produce the desired optical wavefronts (shown in red), resulting in better images. In the future, adaptive metalenses will be built into imaging systems, such as cell phone cameras and microscope, enabling flat, compact autofocus as well as the capability for simultaneously correcting optical aberrations and performing optical image stabilization, all in a single plane of control. (Image courtesy of the Capasso Lab/Harvard SEAS)

The researchers chose a thin, transparent dielectic elastomer with low loss meaning light travels through the material with little scattering to attach to the lens. To do so, they needed to developed a platform to transfer and adhere the lens to the soft surface.

Together, the lens and muscle are only 30 microns thick.

News Source: https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2018/02/researchers-combine-metalens-with-artificial-muscle

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