Silicon nitride metalenses for unpolarized high-NA visible imaging

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a high-NA, high-transmission silicon nitride metalens for unpolarized visible light, enabling ultra-compact imaging with diffraction-limited focus and potential applications in miniaturized optical systems.

Contribution

It introduces a CMOS-compatible silicon nitride metalens with near-unity NA and high transmission, fabricated with a novel nanopost array for visible light imaging.

Findings

Achieved NA~0.98 with ~0.8 transmission for visible light

Realized a 1-cm-diameter metalens with over half a billion nanoposts

Demonstrated diffraction-limited virtual focus spots in visible spectrum

Abstract

As one of nanoscale planar structures, metasurface has shown excellent superiorities on manipulating light intensity, phase and/or polarization with specially designed nanoposts pattern. It allows to miniature a bulky optical lens into the chip-size metalens with wavelength-order thickness, playing an unprecedented role in visible imaging systems (e.g. ultrawide-angle lens and telephoto). However, a CMOS-compatible metalens has yet to be achieved in the visible region due to the limitation on material properties such as transmission and compatibility. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a divergent metalens based on silicon nitride platform with large numerical aperture (NA~0.98) and high transmission (~0.8) for unpolarized visible light, fabricated by a 695-nm-thick hexagonal silicon nitride array with a minimum space of 42 nm between adjacent nanoposts. Nearly diffraction-limit virtual focus spots are achieved within the visible region. Such metalens enables to shrink objects into a micro-scale size field of view as small as a single-mode fiber core. Furthermore, a macroscopic metalens with 1-cm-diameter is also realized including over half billion nanoposts, showing a potential application of wide viewing-angle functionality. Thanks to the high-transmission and CMOS-compatibility of silicon nitride, our findings may open a new door for the miniaturization of optical lenses in the fields of optical fibers, microendoscopes, smart phones, aerial cameras, beam shaping, and other integrated on-chip devices.