The thinnest lens on Earth, made of concentric rings of tungsten disulphide , uses excitons to efficiently focus light. The lens is as thick as a single layer of WS2, just three atoms thick. The bottom left shows an exciton: an excited electron bound to the positively charged ‘hole’ in the atomic lattice. Credit: Ludovica Guarneri and Thomas Bauer
When you imagine a lens, you probably picture a piece of curved glass. This type of lens works because light is refracted when it enters the glass, and again when it exits, allowing us to make things appear larger or closer than they actually are. We have used curved lenses for more than two millennia, allowing us to study the movements of distant planets and stars, to reveal tiny microorganisms, and to improve our vision.
The scientists detected a clear peak in lens efficiency for the specific wavelengths of light sent out by the excitons. While the effect is already observed at room temperature, the lenses are even more efficient when cooled down. This is because excitons do their work better at lower temperatures.Another one of the lens’s unique features is that, while some of the light passing through it makes a bright focal point, most light passes through unaffected.
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