University of Utah engineers develop thin, lightweight lens that could produce slimmer smartphone cameras, longer-flying drones

As thinner and thinner smartphones hit the market, one thing still ruins the slim profile — the bump on the back caused by the camera lens. University of Utah electrical and computer engineering scientists think they have solved that problem. 

A team of UofU researchers have developed a new kind of optical lens that is much thinner and lighter than conventional camera lenses and also works with night imaging. The development could flatten those camera bumps and has application as well as for drones and night vision cameras for soldiers.

The team’s work is profiled in a new research paper profiled in the latest edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper is co-authored by UofU electrical and computer engineering graduate students Monjurul Meem, Sourangsu Banerji and Apratim Majumder; electrical and computer engineering associate professors Rajesh Menon and Berardi Sensale Rodriguez; and mathematics associate professor Fernando Guevara Vasquez.

While conventional lenses for smartphone cameras are a couple of millimeters thick, the newly developed lens is only a few microns thick — a thousand times thinner than regular lenses, according to Menon.

“Our lens is a hundred times lighter and a thousand times thinner, but the performance can be as good as conventional lenses,” Menon said.

A conventional curved lens takes light that bounces off an object and bends it before it ultimately reaches the camera sensor that forms the digital picture. But this new lens has many microstructures, each bending the light in the correct direction at the sensor. The team has developed a fabrication process with a new type of polymer along with algorithms that can calculate the geometry of these microstructures. 

“You can think of these microstructures as very small pixels of a lens,” Menon explained. “They’re not a lens by themselves but all working together to act as a lens.”

The result is a lens that is flat instead of curved and more than 20 times thinner than a human hair with the added capability of being used in thermal imaging to see objects in the dark.

While the development could ultimately produce smartphone cameras with no bump, it could also give them the ability to record thermal imaging to look for heat signatures. But a more immediate use for this technology would allow lighter military drones to fly longer for night missions or to map forest fires or look for victims of natural disasters. And soldiers in the field could carry much lighter night vision cameras for longer durations.

Menon said the new lens could also be cheaper to manufacture because the design allows them to be created from plastic instead of glass.

The UofU research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Menon is currently working to commercialize the lenses with a university startup called Oblate Optics.