A brand new type of lens called a metalens has just passed a major hurdle. A metalens is a flat surface that use nanostructures to focus light, and it could change optics forever by replacing the traditional bulky, curved lenses we know.

Up until now these ultra-compact lenses have had enormous potential, but they’ve struggled to focus a broad spectrum of light. Well, that just changed.

For the first time researchers have managed to develop a single metalens capable of focusing all the colours of the rainbow – the entire visible spectrum of light, making white light – into one point at a high resolution, something that has required multiple lenses in the past.

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