Large-Area Floating Display with Wafer-Scale Manufactured Metalens Arrays

Metasurface-based flat optics has a great potential to replace conventional bulky and heavy optical elements, consistent with the trend of miniaturizing optical elements. One of the trends is to broaden the operating area of the metasurface. The previous approaches are focused on expanding the metasurface area, which has intrinsic manufacturing and optical limitations. Here, this work presents the fabrication of wafer-scale metalens arrays, and demonstrates the Gabor superlens composed of the metalens arrays, which behaves optically like a large lens system. A pair of fabricated 8-inch-sized metalens arrays are used to float the large-area display, producing a real image in the air. This superlens is easily manufactured in a high-throughput and cost-effective manner using an argon fluoride dry scanner and a single reticle. Their capability for diffraction-limited focusing and imaging is demonstrated. Considering the groundbreaking nature of imaging a large-area display through the metalens arrays, this work shows a great potential for scaling up the optical display systems in a simple manner.