Recent advances of wide-angle metalenses: principle, design, and applications

Optical imaging systems, like microscopes, cameras, and telescopes, continue to expand the scope of human observation of the world. As one of the key indicators of imaging systems, the field-of-view (FOV) is often limited by coma aberration. Expanding it generally relies on a combination of complex lenses, leading to a bulky and cumbersome system. Recently, the emergency of meta-optics provides an alternative to constructing compact and lightweight large-FOV metalens through elaborated phase modulation within a flat surface, showing great potential in surveillance, unmanned vehicles, onboard planes or satellites, medical science, and other new applications. In this article, we review recent advances of wide-angle metalenses, including operation principles, design strategies, and application demos. Firstly, basic principles of wide-angle imaging using a single metalens are interpreted. Secondly, some advanced methods for designing subwavelength structures with high angle robustness and high efficiency are discussed. Thirdly, some representative functional devices and applications are surveyed. Finally, we conclude with an outlook on future potentials and challenges that need to be overcome.