flatlens

As part of an industry presentation on nanotechnology in Seol, Korea, Samsung executives revealed that the company is researching metalens technology, which refers to a flat lens system that instead uses nanoparticles to align light rather than relying on curved optics.

A team of engineers at MIT and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell have created something that, on the surface, seems impossible: they've designed a 180° fisheye lens from a single, 1mm-thin piece of calcium fluoride glass that is completely flat.

Scientists have created a new focus-free camera using an ultra-flat lens that "eliminates the need for focusing." The development could have an impact on both photography and a wide range of industries.

A team of researchers from the University of Utah have made a major breakthrough in optics by developing a new kind of flat lens that's only ten microns thick, making it "a thousand times thinner than regular lenses." And apparently, it doesn't sacrifice performance.

Researchers have created the first "metalens" that can focus the entire visible spectrum of light onto a single point in high resolution. The breakthrough brings metalenses one step closer towards replacing bulky camera lenses with much smaller chips.

A team of researchers at Harvard are trying to revolutionize the world of optical lenses. Instead of traditional curved lenses that suffer from various optical flaws, they are working on a completely flat and ultra-thin lens that overcomes age-old problems and pushes optical quality to the limits of the laws of nature.

Think pancake lenses are flat? In the future, camera manufacturers might be able to replace those bulky glass elements inside lenses with lens elements that are thinner than a piece of paper. The lenses would not only be third-dimension-free, they would also be distortion-free.