Boston, June 16, 2016
A new paper in Science describes how well-designed arrays of nanometer-scale metallic antennas, which are called metasurfaces, may can be used to create visible light lenses and hold the promise that bulky lens structures such as complex microscope objectives may be shrunk down into the fraction of a millimeter-scale. The breakthrough reported by Khorasaninejad et al. shows that nanoscale arrays of TiO fins can be created and function as high numerical objectives. When designed and used with monochromatic light these lenses rival classical objectives, indeed can exceed them in resolution. These new lenses suggest that we may soon have cell phone cameras that function as well as compound microscopes and may revolutionize the worlds of biosensing and nanophotonic networks.