Advanced Metastructures for Optical Aberration Correction & Cost Reduction in LWIR Imaging Systems

We focus on two key challenges in LWIR optics for uncooled sensors: (1) Replacing Germanium (Ge) with U.S.-made diamond-turnable chalcogenides, and (2) drastically reducing lens-assembly costs by integrating diamond-turnable diffractive metastructures onto a refractive surface, thereby minimizing the need for multiple separate optical elements. We propose using inverse design to create diamond-turnable metastructures on LWIR-transparent chalcogenide refractive surfaces. These metastructures will reduce off-axis and chromatic aberrations, enhance depth-of-focus (DoF), and minimize the number of optical elements, thereby reducing assembly costs.