Aberration-corrected hybrid metalens for longwave infrared thermal imaging

Wide-angle metalenses in the longwave infrared have shown great advantages over the traditional refractive doublets or triplets, due to light weight, CMOS compatibility, and low cost. However, previous endeavors have been plagued by challenges including a narrow waveband, large F-number, distortion, and spherical aberration. To address these problems, this study introduces two dispersive metasurfaces, placed near the front focal plane and upon the rear plane of a plano-convex lens, to correct optical aberrations. Utilizing this methodology, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an aberration-corrected hybrid metalens for thermal imaging in the 8–12 μm waveband, featuring an FOV of 24°, F-number of 1.2, and diameter of 12.2 mm. The developed hybrid metalens rigorously evaluated, exhibits Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) values exceeding 0.2 at 20 Lp/mm across the full FOV, and features an average transmission of 48.7 %, a relative focusing efficiencies of up to 42.1 %, polarization insensitivity and broadband imaging capacity. These results emphasize the potential applications of our system in diverse fields, such as camera lenses, autonomous driving, healthcare, and environmental monitoring.