Remove ‘Katuktu’ Smartphone … POSTECH and Samsung Develop World’s Thinnest ‘0.001mm Thick’ Lens

Check-in 2021.01.01 20:00

Joon-Seok Noh, POSTECH Professor Seung-Hoon Han Samsung Jong Ki-won Master Joint Research
One hundredth of a hair, one-tenth of a thousandth of a conventional glass lens
Only infrared yet … “Cameras and sensors commercialization in 3 years”
‘Katuktu’ Smartphone Expected To Solve With Follow-up Investigation On Visible Light Lenses

With POSTECH Samsung Electronics (005930)It has developed the world’s thinnest 0.001mm thick camera lens. It is one-tenth the thickness of the existing lens. It is expected to be used as a technology that reduces the size of the camera in Samsung smartphones and eliminates the ‘Katuk-tu’ design (a design with a protruding rear camera).

The Ministry of Science and Technology, Information and Communication announced that the joint research team of Joon-Seok Noh, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Chemical Engineering at POSTECH, and Seung-Hoon Han, Master in Imaging Device Laboratory at the Institute of Samsung Electronics Advanced Technology, developed the world’s first ultra-thin infrared ‘goal lens’ and mass production technology using ‘goal material’. Sun said.

The results of the research were published in the journal ‘ACS Nano’ published by the American Chemical Society (ACS) on this day. The joint research team plans to commercialize this technology as an infrared camera lens three years later and then apply it to smartphone cameras.

To collect light and obtain a clear image, you need a convex lens that deflects the direction of the light and collects it at one point. Existing convex glass lenses must be at least 1 cm thick to capture light effectively. This is the reason why the lens weight of high-performance DSLR cameras exceeds 4 kg, and smartphone cameras also have technical limitations in thickness compression.

The research team used a type of metamaterial, not glass. Metamaterials are artificial materials that do not exist in nature and are created by designing structures according to the desired functions. Although its use has been limited due to high manufacturing costs, the research team has developed a ‘one-step printing technology’ that can print finely in a desired pattern by mixing special nanoparticles with metamaterials to reduce cost.

A meta lens is a flat lens in which 50 nanometers (nm · 1 billionth of a meter) of nanoparticles are regularly arranged on the surface. Although it’s not actually convex, the nanoparticles refract light and collect it at one point like a convex lens.

As a result of attaching a test lens with a diameter of 4 mm to the real infrared camera, the research team performed the same function as the existing infrared camera, such as photographing the distribution of blood vessels in human skin.

However, for its commercialization, it still needs to be supplemented by additional research. This is because it costs hundreds of thousands of won to make a lens with a diameter of 4mm, so it is still expensive and the resistance is weak compared to glass lenses. The research team plans to solve these problems by improving the production process and applying coating technology.

Professor Roh said: “Time to market is expected to be 3 to 5 years later.” .

Metalenses can only be used to collect infrared light, not visible. Visible light lenses have already been developed, but the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet lights that make up visible light have different refractive indices (the degree of curvature as they pass through the lens), for what they separate from each other as they pass through the lens. It remains. The research team plans to solve this problem and apply the technology to cameras and visible light sensors in general.