Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Extraordinary Breakthrough in Artificial Eyes and Artificial Muscle Technology

Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD

Metalens, flat surface that use nanostructures to focus light promise to transform optics by replacing the bulky, curved lenses presently used in optical devices with a simple, flat surface.

Scientists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences designed metalens who are mainly focused on light and minimizes spherical aberrations through a dense pattern of nanostructures, since the information density in each lens will be high due to nanostructures being small.

According to Federico Capasso, “This demonstrates the feasibility of embedded optical zoom and auto focus for a wide range of applications, including cell phone cameras, eyeglasses, and virtual and augmented reality hardware. It also shows the possibility of future optical microscopes, which operate fully electronically and can correct many aberrations simultaneously.”

However, when scientists tried to scale up the lens, the file size of the design alone would balloon up to gigabytes or even terabytes. And as a result, create a new algorithm in order to shrivel the file size to make the metalens flawless with the innovation currently used to create integrated circuits. Afterward, scientists follow the large metalens to an artificial muscle without conceding its ability to focus light. In the human eye, the lens is enclosed by ciliary muscle, which stretches or compresses the lens, changing its shape to adjust its focal length. Scientists at that moment choose a thin, transparent dielectric elastomer with low to attach to the lens.

Within the experiment, when the voltage is applied to elastomers, it stretches, the position of nanopillars on the surface of the lens shift. The scientists as a result show that the lens can focus instantaneous, control abnormalities triggered by astigmatisms, and achieve image shift. Since the adaptive metalens is flat, you can correct those deviations and assimilate diverse optical capabilities onto a single plane of control.

SOURCE

Researchers combine artificial eye and artificial muscle