Wafer-level meta-aspheric lens enables ultracompact wide-angle near-infrared imaging

May 06, 2026

Researchers developed a wafer-level meta-aspheric lens combining 101.5-degree field of view, 3.39 mm thickness, and high imaging quality for AR glasses and smartphones.

(Nanowerk News) Researchers at Hunan University and their collaborators have developed a meta-aspheric lens that combines wide-angle near-infrared imaging, an ultrathin profile, and high optical quality in a single wafer-level-manufactured component. Published in Light: Advanced Manufacturing (“Ultracompact Wide-FOV near-infrared camera with a wafer-level manufactured meta-aspheric lens”), the work addresses a persistent limitation in miniaturized optics: conventional refractive designs cannot simultaneously deliver fields of view above 100 degrees and total track lengths below 5 mm, restricting their use in smartphones and wearable augmented reality (AR) glasses.

Key Findings

Near-infrared imaging underpins a growing range of applications, from facial recognition and eye tracking to medical diagnostics. Compared with visible-light modules, near-infrared systems offer deeper tissue penetration and stronger low-light performance. Yet shrinking these optical systems to fit inside portable consumer devices has meant sacrificing either viewing angle, thickness, or image quality. The new meta-aspheric lens overcomes this trade-off through a fully integrated architecture that bonds an aspherical lens and a metalens — a flat optical element patterned with nanoscale structures — at the wafer level. Unlike earlier hybrid approaches that relied on separate refractive and diffractive components held together with mechanical fixtures, the bonded design achieves micrometer-level alignment precision without any auxiliary hardware. The result is a module compressed to cubic-millimeter scale with imaging performance that closely matches simulated predictions. The team, led by Researcher Qiang Song from the Greater Bay Area Institute for Innovation at Hunan University, Professor Huigao Duan from the College of Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering at Hunan University, and Professor Xin Yuan from Westlake University, worked in collaboration with Goertek Omnilights NanoOptics Co., Ltd. (formerly Sunny Optical Olightek). Their manufacturing approach builds in producibility from the start, relying on experimentally validated dispersion models so that fabricated devices match design targets. The wafer-level process is designed for high throughput. An entire 8-inch wafer can be processed in a single production run, yielding thousands of individual lenses that need only one dicing step to separate. This efficiency positions the technology for scalable commercialization rather than remaining a laboratory proof of concept. To validate performance, the researchers conducted both direct and computational imaging experiments. The camera demonstrated reliable near-infrared imaging in eye tracking, blood vessel visualization, and computational pixel super-resolution tasks. When mounted in AR glasses, the lens module’s compact dimensions allowed it to be embedded without affecting the device’s appearance or wearability, capturing complete eye contours and corneal reflections across 0 to 80 degrees for accurate gaze detection. “We introduce a co-design strategy that fully integrates the metasurface and aspherical lens from the beginning as a single optical entity, enabled by our new concept of ‘design for hybrid manufacturability,'” said Researcher Qiang Song from the Greater Bay Area Institute for Innovation at Hunan University. “This moves beyond component-level innovation to introduce a system-level methodology unifying optical design and mass manufacturing, closing the gap between laboratory demonstrations and scalable commercialization.” “This technology establishes a new benchmark for high-performance miniaturized near-infrared imaging,” the team added. “It opens the door for next-generation smartphones and AR optical systems, with strong potential for applications in biometric authentication, medical imaging, and human-device interactive interfaces.” With facial recognition, eye tracking, and medical diagnostics all requiring ever-smaller near-infrared modules, the ability to mass-produce a meta-aspheric lens at wafer scale — while maintaining both wide-angle coverage and sub-4 mm thickness — directly addresses one of the main bottlenecks in next-generation portable optics.