Incorporate Diffractive Optics and Metalenses into Macroscopic Optical Modeling with Greater Ease

As technology advances, the demand for optical elements continues to increase. However, many devices and systems now require smaller technology. As a result, optical designers are challenged to create large-scale designs using smaller optical components.

Metalenses and diffractive optical elements (DOEs) offer a solution to this challenge because they are more compact than traditional lenses. In this way, they help decrease system size and generally enable a simpler assembly process. Yet modeling and designing systems that contain metalenses or DOEs can be difficult.

To help optical designers navigate these challenges, Ansys Zemax OpticStudio 2024 R1 delivers enhanced support for incorporating metalenses and DOEs into macroscopic optical modeling more easily.

Enhance Optical Designs Across Industries

Metalenses employ subwavelength “meta-atom” patterns on dielectric surfaces to manipulate incident light. DOEs, also referred to as digital diffractive optics, consist of microstructures at the wavelength scale and utilize the wave characteristics of light to achieve their function. Both optical components are flat, thin, and lightweight, which make them a favorable choice when designing compact high-performance systems.

Essentially, they can be used in any design in which it is important to reduce the size and weight of the optics in the system. This includes lidar for 3D sensing in autonomous vehicles and facial recognition systems; medical devices such as endoscopes and microscopes; surveillance systems such as infrared and machine vision cameras; display and imaging systems such as cellphone cameras, complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors, and augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) headsets; and holography.

At present, metalenses and DOEs are most commonly featured in dot projectors used in lidar and polarization imaging systems, but development surrounding other applications is increasing, particularly endoscope and compact camera modules. The optical components are also suitable in the design of prescription glasses, which expands application prospects even further.

Model Optical Systems with Greater Ease

With such a wide scope of possibilities, optical designers can benefit from recent release features as described here.

Updates to Zemax Ray Database and Path Analysis 

The Zemax Ray Database (ZRD) file generated when running a nonsequential ray trace now includes data needed to accurately track rays in systems with reflective, refractive, and diffractive optics. New ray segment properties include total internal reflection (TIR) as a flag, optical path length (OPL) in lens units, OPL in wave units, and diffraction orders.

Expanding upon this, the Path Analysis tool — found exclusively in OpticStudio nonsequential mode — uses the new ray data information in the ZRD to improve functionality. The tool can now also construct path sequences using objects’ faces and diffraction orders along the ray path. In other words, Path Analysis can now distinguish paths that follow a different diffraction order from paths that hit different faces on the same object. Aside from its recent upgrade, the tool allows the separation of physical paths that rays follow within an optical system. It can be utilized to study stray light generated by ghost reflections happening in optical components, such as component-level stray light.

New DLL for Direct Modeling of Metalenses in OpticStudio and Ansys Lumerical

A new DLL enables the modeling of large-scale metalens components in OpticStudio.

Users first simulate and generate meta-atom data in Ansys Lumerical and then use the DLL to feed that data into OpticStudio. In Lumerical, a sweep of the parameters of the unit cell (e.g., radius of a nanorod) is performed to generate a database of parametric nano-element responses. Based on this data and the target phase profile, a large metalens is defined. The database is written into a file that includes a map with indexes, pointing at a discrete list of possible values for the phase and amplitude of every cell. The input is either a pair of files with file extensions .pmap and .aph or a single file with extension file name .h5. This data is then used in the Zemax plugin included in the download package to integrate the large lens into a macroscopic optical system that can be simulated with ray tracing.

Get Started Today

Metalenses and DOEs have the potential to revolutionize optics with their multifunctional capabilities and compact form factor. Updated capabilities in OpticStudio and integrated optics workflows empower designers to seamlessly capture design variations and incorporate DOEs and metalenses into macroscopic optical models with greater ease.

To discover how OpticStudio can benefit your optical designs, request a free trial of OpticStudio today.