Zheng et al.

Light: Science & Applications (2023)12:166 Official journal of the CIOMP 2047-7538
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-023-01217-z www.nature.com/lsa

NEWS & VIEWS Open Access

Metalens and microtaper spectrometers on a

fingertip
1 1✉
Peixia Zheng , Xuan Zhang1 and Hong-Chao Liu

Abstract
A multi-foci metalens and a leaky-mode microtaper provide innovative platforms to achieve high-resolution,
wideband light spectra in millimeter-sized devices, thereby paving new ways for the commercialization of on-fingertip
spectrometers.

With the development of on-chip integrated photonics precise control over the path of light, making it an
technology, researchers are exploring ways to create attractive candidate for imaging and optical communica-
compact and portable spectrometers those can be easily tion. Meanwhile, microfibers can transmit and reflect light
integrated into various devices and systems. These min- with minimal distortion, making them useful tools for
iaturized spectrometers are expected to perform highly spectral measurements. In two recent papers published in
precise measurements of light-matter interactions, Light: Science & Applications and eLight, two research
enabling them to identify chemical compositions of dif- groups led by Heriot-Watt University and Zhejiang Uni-
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ferent materials, detect pollutants in the environment, and versity proposed the use of multi-foci metalens and leaky-
diagnose medical conditions in real-time. This has led to mode microtaper to obtain high-resolution spectral
the development of a variety of new applications for information, respectively.
spectrometers from healthcare and biotechnology, such as In the paper entitled “Compact multi-foci metalens
wearable medical devices, to environmental monitoring spectrometer”, Prof. Xianzhong Chen’s group proposed a
and agriculture, such as handheld environmental detec- multi-foci metalens that can focus light at multiple
tors. Although the miniaturization of spectrometers wavelengths1, as shown in the left part of Fig. 1. Multi-foci
remains lots of challenges, recent advancements in metalens usually have small planner structures which can
nanofabrication techniques and materials science have simultaneously focus different colors of light into multiple
made it possible to fabricate powerful, low-cost, and spots, allowing for a single-shot spectroscopy and ima-
compact spectrometers those are capable of delivering ging. Although sub-regional design and folded metalenses
high-quality light spectra. As the demand for miniaturized have been proposed to achieve multi-wavelength disper-
spectrometers continues to grow, researchers are pushing sion control2–5, limited pixels designed for each wave-
the boundaries of their capabilities, paving the way for length always result in poor beam convergence quality or
exciting new innovations in the field of optics and multiple focal points at different focal lengths. Creatively,
photonics. the authors in this work demonstrate a compact metalens
Metasurfaces and microfibers exhibit immense potential with multiple off-axis foci in the same focal plane with
in various optical applications due to their ultra-compact nearly the same spot size and maximum intensity, which
nature. As a typical kind of metasurfaces, metalenses can perfectly and effectively solved this problem. Based on the
manipulate the dispersion of light at will and provide intrinsic dispersion and multi-foci properties of a meta-
lens device, the wavelength information is converted into
the intensity distribution of different focal points on the
Correspondence: Hong-Chao Liu ([email protected])
1
Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering, University of Macau, same plane. Experimental results demonstrate that the
Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macao SAR, China

© The Author(s) 2023

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Zheng et al. Light: Science & Applications (2023)12:166 Page 2 of 3

to-manufacture and integrated fiber taper structure. The

ViT network as the brain of the system, can finally identify

Intensity
correlations between spectral information and leaky mode
images. When light passes through the microtaper, it
Wavelength excites a leaky mode that is highly sensitive to the incident
light spectra. By measuring the speckles of the leaky mode,
researchers can extract the spectral information of the
input light field. This microtape spectrometer can operate
within a wide range of wavelengths, from 450 nm to
1000 nm with a high resolution of 1 pm. Moreover, the
Fig. 1 Schematic view of the metalens and microtaper spectrometers core components cost less than $15, making it a low-cost
on a fingertip solution for spectral sensing applications. The proposed
flexible and stable system is expected to have numerous
applications in various fields, such as food inspection, drug
proposed compact metalens spectrometer can split and identification, personalized health diagnostics, etc.
focus different wavelengths at 180 predesigned focal points Both two works above show the utilization of ultra-
under the illumination of both monochromatic and poly- compact components, with one metalens of 300 ×
chromatic light beams. It can achieve nanometer-level 300 μm2 while the other focusing on microtapers of 1
spectral resolution over a broadband wavelength in the mm2, both of which construct high-resolution spectro-
visible domain at a working distance of 300 μm. With ease meters. They demonstrate the versatility and novel
of fabrication, this metalens-based spectrometer technique potential of metalens and microtapers in spectral sensing
exhibits great potential for on-chip integrated photonics and analysis. While both works contribute to the minia-
and compact spectrometry applications, including chemi- turization development of spectrometers, they differ in
cal sensing and environmental monitoring. their approaches to spectral analysis. In Ref. 1, the
In the other paper entitled “Microtaper leaky-mode metalens is a direct spectrometer that splits and focuses
spectrometer with picometer resolution”, the authors multiple wavelength light into predesigned focal points
proposed a microtaper with enhanced leaky mode for on the same plane, allowing for the direct reading of
spectral sensing6, as shown in the right part of Fig. 1 different wavelength field distribution. While in Ref. 6,
Microfibers are ideal small-size tools for manipulating the microtaper serves as the leaky mode generator to give
light fields. Microtaper is a microfiber-based device that different speckles according to different spectral infor-
can force the guided modes to the leaky mode over a short mation. Later, a computational process is required to
distance if drawn under non-adiabatic conditions. Multi- obtain the final spectra. Two proposed spectrometers in
mode interference in optical fibers has been proposed to both two works exhibit good flexibility, stability, and
generate random speckles associated with spectra infor- resolution, making them potential candidates for on-
mation7, for example, a compact all-fiber speckle spec- fingertip spectrometers, especially for the measurements
trometer was demonstrated by using cascading coreless of line spectra. However, the importance of continuous
fibers and photonic cryptal fibers8. However, conventional spectra cannot be overlooked, and further studies are
methods such as rough surface and multimode fiber expected to explore their potential for different kinds of
usually require bulky or expensive detectors for speckle spectra retrieval. Overall, both two works broaden the
measurement, limiting their applications9,10. Moreover, miniaturization of spectrometers, provide novel ways to
leaky modes are generally considered undesirable in pre- increase resolution and working bandwidth, and steer the
vious works. Creatively, Prof. Yaoguang Ma’s group pro- development of emerging spectrometers.
posed to use leaky modes of a microtaper as a means of
spectral information retrieval. It is known that leaky Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
modes can be generated by adjusting the fiber geometry.
The authors constructed a scalable spectrometer system
that combined a curved microfiber taper tip, a com-
plementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) imaging
sensor, and a light-weight vision transformer (ViT) net-
work to achieve hyperspectral imaging6. In the system, the
microfiber taper tip can generate complex leaky modes References
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