New Flat Lens Could Revolutionize Cameras as We Know Them - 6:30
AM Camera lenses might look radically different in a couple
years thanks to a new technology developed by a group of
physicists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences (SEAS). Using a very thin wafer of silicon the
scientists have created a flat lens that is only 60 nanometers
thick and does away with the normal curved glass we’re used to
seeing on most cameras. “Our website almost went down because of
all the hits,” says Federico Capasso, the principal investigator
on the project and a Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied
Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical
Engineering at SEAS. “People are seeing the revolutionary
potential.” Curved glass is currently used to make camera lenses
because it can bend the light coming from many angles in such a
way that it all ends up at the same focal point, be that a slice
of 35mm film or an electric sensor. The problem with curved
glass is that it produces aberration