2019/01/01 by Sourangsu Banerji, Monjurul Meem, Banerji, Sourangsu +6 · 2 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · #Advanced Antenna and Metasurface Technologies #FOS: Physical sciences #Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications #Optical Coatings and Gratings #Optics (physics.optics)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1901.05042
openalex publication_date 2019/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recently, there has been an explosion of interest in metalenses for imaging. The interest is primarily based on their sub-wavelength thicknesses. Diffractive lenses have been used as thin lenses since the late 19th century. Here, we show that multi-level diffractive lenses (MDLs), when designed properly can exceed the performance of metalenses. Furthermore, MDLs can be designed and fabricated with larger constituent features, making them accessible to low-cost, large area volume manufacturing, which is generally challenging for metalenses. The support substrate will dominate overall thickness for all flat optics. Therefore the advantage of a slight decrease in thickness (from ~2λ to ~λ/2) afforded by metalenses may not be useful. We further elaborate on the differences between these approaches and clarify that metalenses have unique advantages when manipulating the polarization states of light.