Journal
NATURE
Volume 497, Issue 7447, Pages 95-99Publisher
NATURE RESEARCH
DOI: 10.1038/nature12083
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Funding
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Nanoelectromechanical /Microelectromechanical Science AMP
- Technology (N/MEMS SAMP
- T) Fundamentals programme by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SPAWAR) [N66001-10-1-4008]
- National Science Foundation through an Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) programme
- Directorate For Engineering
- Div Of Electrical, Commun & Cyber Sys [1307561] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Directorate For Engineering
- Emerging Frontiers & Multidisciplinary Activities [0937847] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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In arthropods, evolution has created a remarkably sophisticated class of imaging systems, with a wide-angle field of view, low aberrations, high acuity to motion and an infinite depth of field(1-3). A challenge in building digital cameras with the hemispherical, compound apposition layouts of arthropod eyes is that essential design requirements cannot be met with existing planar sensor technologies or conventional optics. Here we present materials, mechanics and integration schemes that afford scalable pathways to working, arthropod-inspired cameras with nearly full hemispherical shapes (about 160 degrees). Their surfaces are densely populated by imaging elements (artificial ommatidia), which are comparable in number (180) to those of the eyes of fire ants (Solenopsis fugax) and bark beetles(4,5) (Hylastes nigrinus). The devices combine elastomeric compound optical elements with deformable arrays of thin silicon photodetectors into integrated sheets that can be elastically transformed from the planar geometries in which they are fabricated to hemispherical shapes for integration into apposition cameras. Our imaging results and quantitative ray-tracing-based simulations illustrate key features of operation. These general strategies seem to be applicable to other compound eye devices, such as those inspired by moths and lacewings(6,7) (refracting superposition eyes), lobster and shrimp(8) (reflecting superposition eyes), and houseflies(9) (neural superposition eyes).
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