optique

The word « lens » takes its name from the Latin word for lentil. Both are both hemispheric shapes bound together on their flat surface. So a « flat lens » sounds like a contradiction of terms. Yet that is exactly what Andrei Faraon is working on at California Institute of Technology’s Nanoscale and Quantum Optics Lab.

Thin-film optics is the branch of optics that focuses on thin, structured layers of different materials. These layers range from a fraction of a nanometer up to several micrometers thick but are usually in the order of the wavelengths of ultraviolet light, which is about 500nm. Their synthesis is controlled via deposition, with one or more layers of material layered onto the substrate, usually via physical vapor deposition.