Inverse design enables large-scale high-performance meta-optics reshaping virtual reality

TLDR

Meta‑optics has achieved major breakthroughs in the past decade, yet conventional forward design struggles with increasing functionality complexity and device size, and inverse design is limited by expensive brute‑force solvers to small, hard‑to‑realize devices. The study introduces a general inverse‑design framework for large‑scale, aperiodic 3‑D meta‑optics that reduces simulation and optimization costs. The framework employs a fast approximate solver and adjoint method, and incorporates fabrication constraints through a surrogate model. Experiments show centimeter‑scale, aberration‑corrected visible‑light metalenses with high numerical aperture and polychromatic focusing, and demonstrate their applicability to virtual‑reality platforms via a meta‑eyepiece and laser‑back‑illuminated micro‑LCD.

Abstract

Abstract Meta-optics has achieved major breakthroughs in the past decade; however, conventional forward design faces challenges as functionality complexity and device size scale up. Inverse design aims at optimizing meta-optics design but has been currently limited by expensive brute-force numerical solvers to small devices, which are also difficult to realize experimentally. Here, we present a general inverse-design framework for aperiodic large-scale (20k × 20k λ 2 ) complex meta-optics in three dimensions, which alleviates computational cost for both simulation and optimization via a fast approximate solver and an adjoint method, respectively. Our framework naturally accounts for fabrication constraints via a surrogate model. In experiments, we demonstrate aberration-corrected metalenses working in the visible with high numerical aperture, poly-chromatic focusing, and large diameter up to the centimeter scale. Such large-scale meta-optics opens a new paradigm for applications, and we demonstrate its potential for future virtual-reality platforms by using a meta-eyepiece and a laser back-illuminated micro-Liquid Crystal Display.