Long wavelength infrared imaging under ambient thermal radiation via an all-silicon metalens

Further miniaturization of imaging systems is prevented by the prevalent, traditional bulky refractive optics today. Meta-optics have recently generated great interest in the visible wavelength as a replacement for refractive optics thanks to their low weight, small size, and amenability to high-throughput semiconductor manufacturing. Here, we extend these meta-optics to the long-wave infrared (LWIR) regime and demonstrate imaging with a 2 cm aperture f /1 all-silicon metalens under ambient thermal emission. We showed that even with the strongly chromatic nature of the metalenses, we can perform ambient light imaging, primarily due to the lack of wavelength discrimination in the sensor, as is the norm for an RGB-camera in the visible. (c) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

Traditional bulky refractive optics are a barrier to further miniaturization of imaging systems, while meta-optics have attracted great interest as a replacement for refractive optics in the visible wavelength range. This study extends meta-optics to the long-wave infrared regime and demonstrates imaging under ambient thermal emission, showing that the chromatic nature of the metalenses does not affect ambient light imaging.