Samsung’s Achromatic Metalens Goals to Advance XR and Optics

February 25, 2025 – Samsung Electronics has at present introduced that it has printed a joint analysis paper with Pohang College of Science and Know-how (POSTECH) in South Korea detailing the event of an achromatic metalens within the tutorial journal Nature Materials. 

Based on Samsung, the paper, titled “Roll-to-plate printable RGB-achromatic metalens for wide-field-of-view holographic near-eye shows,” displays the findings of analysis carried out by Samsung and POSTECH’s joint analysis crew, whereby they developed an achromatic metalens free from colour distortions and mixed it with holographic shows to deal with varied optical imperfections and irregularities.

What’s a metalens?

A metalens is a flat lens composed of nanoscale constructions able to controlling mild diffraction, which might drastically cut back dimension and thickness in comparison with conventional convex optical lenses. Whereas a convex lens sometimes has a thickness of a number of millimeters, generally exceeding a centimeter, metalenses are a lot thinner, often lower than 0.5 mm. For that reason, they’ve been acknowledged as a possible next-generation optical element for functions in shows and cameras, in keeping with Samsung.

The corporate additionally famous that regardless of these benefits, metalenses have encountered technical challenges in product improvement as a consequence of extreme chromatic aberration, often known as colour fringing, which happens when a lens fails to focus all colours to the identical level, creating coloured fringes alongside the perimeters of objects in images and resulting in vital picture distortion.

To handle chromatic aberration, the analysis crew redefined the traditional design method for metalenses. By accounting for the interrelationships between all metastructures throughout the design section and designing them concurrently (versus designing particular person metastructures independently and subsequently assembling them onto a substrate), the crew reported profitable elimination of chromatic aberration after fabrication.

Moreover, Samsung acknowledged that in addition to eliminating chromatic aberration, the achromatic metalens developed by the analysis crew additionally achieves a shorter focal size, serving to to considerably cut back the lens’ dimension and weight. 

How achromatic metalenses might improve XR shows

Metalenses sometimes undergo from optical aberrations past chromatic aberration, with picture distortion worsening as display dimension will increase. These points are often addressed by combining a number of lenses, however the analysis crew resolved them by integrating a single achromatic metalens with a holographic show, attaining a large subject of view and clear, distortion-free photographs.

Samsung added that technical validation additional confirmed that changing typical lenses and shows with achromatic metalenses and holographic shows can produce compact, light-weight designs that ship digital photographs that trigger much less eye pressure.

From Analysis to Actuality — What’s Subsequent?

In its announcement on the analysis findings, Samsung acknowledged: “By means of this collaboration between business and academia, Samsung has validated your complete course of—from conceptualizing revolutionary concepts to implementation—confirming the potential for advancing varied future optical techniques and securing next-generation show applied sciences.”

Samsung acknowledged that the brand new analysis findings might assist the event of compact, high-quality holographic XR wearables and immersive media gadgets, in addition to varied optical techniques—together with shows, cameras, and sensors—to boost efficiency and cut back dimension.

The research was led by Dr. Seokil Moon from Samsung Analysis and Professor Junsuk Rho from POSTECH, with researchers Minseok Choi, Joohoon Kim and Kilsoo Shin from POSTECH additionally listed as co-authors of the paper.

Picture credit score: Samsung / Nature Supplies