Metasurface Confocal - Enabling a Shift in Optical Instrumentation

Manufacturing is moving towards the utilisation of smart and autonomous processes, enabled by deeply integrated sensors providing rapid feedback, to facilitate tighter process control and the ability to produce bespoke and small batch parts ‘right first-time’ [1], [2]. Optical measurement is the de facto technique employed for such tasks, providing as it does rapid, non-contact measurements. However, the size and weight of most current optical instrumentation is prohibitive and limits the integration needed for these applications. For this reason, efforts to create highly compact lightweight instrumentation have been made over the past few years, but progress has been slow and incremental, and sensors still fall short of what is required. Metasurfaces, being able to replicate the function of traditional optical elements but without the associated size and weight, offer an ideal path to overcome these issues. The ability of metasurfaces to combine more than one function in a single surface means that, in addition, the sensors can be realised in a simplified form. Where multi-element configurations are required, alignment complexity can be reduced, leading to more robust instrumentation that can be more readily integrated into manufacturing processes.