A Planar Artificial Compound Eye Based on Metalens Array

ZHOU Li; ZHANG Xiaohu; LIN Xiaogang; GAO Chao; GUO Yongcai

doi:10.3788/gzxb20215006.0623001

Abstract

In order to realize an optical imaging system with light-weight， integration and large field of view， a planar artificial compound eye structure based on the utilization of a metalens array is proposed. It uses TiO₂ nanopillars with different orientation angles to manipulate the electro-magnetic wave based on the grometric phase principles. It makes the surface of the metalens array and the image plane both planar， and does not need the non-spherical processing required by the traditional curved compound eyes. With the superposition of the off-axis phase onto the traditional matalens’ focusing phase， the effect produced by the illumination of the non-paraxial light beams on the imaging quality is effectively canceled and a large field of view is achieved. The designed compound eye is mainly composed of an array of 11×11 metalenses. It has the size of the 165 μm×165 μm and overall height of 18.6 μm， with the field of view of 140°×140°. The simulation results indicates that the the proposed compound eye structure achieves good image quality even under the illumination at a large off-axis angle （50°）.