I love the idea of these electro-optic (or in this case electo-thermal) configurable lenses. and fourier optics in general.
What range of optical wavelengths did this lens operate well over, or could a similarly constructed system operate. My experience with electron beam exposed PMMA grating/lenses was that they were OK over the optical range, but did show noticeable dispersion, while for filtered (or laser) optics they worked extremely well to replace much thicker/heavier system solutions.
This was designed for the mid-IR (5.2um). I don’t recall its bandwidth but is was small on order of 100nm.
The dispersion of this material in the mid-IR is relatively flat.
There is active research on dispersion engineering via more complex geometry of the ‘meta-atoms’ to broaden the bandwidth for achromatic metalens optics.
Other research is actively looking to design materials that could have this phase change functionality in the visible wavelength range. All stable phase change materials to my knowledge strongly absorb in the visible range.
Thanks a lot for the quick response! I read enough to see it was designed for multi-micron, but was hoping it would still work down to near-IR. It will be hard to use this for depth imagers or standard CMOS at those longer wavelengths, but for true IR cameras it could be amazing.
What range of optical wavelengths did this lens operate well over, or could a similarly constructed system operate. My experience with electron beam exposed PMMA grating/lenses was that they were OK over the optical range, but did show noticeable dispersion, while for filtered (or laser) optics they worked extremely well to replace much thicker/heavier system solutions.