The advantages of metalenses over diffractive lenses

TLDR

Optical elements are essential in modern devices, but miniaturization makes classical bulky optics problematic, leading to flat optics such as diffractive lenses and newer metasurfaces, which have sparked debate about their relative advantages. The commentary aims to examine and opine on the debate over metalenses versus diffractive lenses. Flat optics, including diffractive lenses and metalenses, leverage subwavelength fabrication to create compact imaging and focusing elements, with metalenses extending diffractive concepts through metasurface technology.

Abstract

Optical elements play a crucial role in many modern systems, from cellphones to missiles. The miniaturization trend poses a challenge to optics, since classical lenses and mirrors tend to be bulky. One way of dealing with this challenge is using flat optics. For many years flat optics has been implemented using diffractive optics technology, but in the last two decades a new technology called metasurfaces has emerged. This technology does not replace diffractive optics, but rather expands on it, leveraging the new ability to manufacture subwavelength features on optical substrates. For imaging and focusing applications, diffractive lenses and metalenses are used, as a subset of diffractive optics and metasurfaces, respectively. Recently there has been debate over whether metalenses offer any real advantages over diffractive lenses. In this commentary we will try to gain some insight into this debate and present our opinion on the subject.