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 films are thin coating layers present in many different technologies. Despite their widespread use, most of the focus is around how they provide a barrier to various stimuli, or how they can be used as a conductive medium. However, there is another class of thin films that we will discuss, and these are optical thin films.