The field of integrated optics has seen an accelerating development over the last decade, breaching from the lab into consumer products. This transition is compounded by the rapid advances in integrated photonic sensing, augmented reality (AR), and light structuring that now define the modern hardware landscape. Our research activities are at the forefront of this evolution, focusing on the design and fabrication of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) and sub-wavelength metasurfaces that redefine the boundaries of imaging and sensing for industrial applications. By engineering the phase, amplitude, and polarization of light at the sub-wavelength scale, we develop flat optical components that offer arbitrary control over the electromagnetic wavefront.

A primary objective of our research is the design and fabrication of high-performance flat optics that operate across a broad spectral range, where we have demonstrated beam shaping optics as well as fully diffractive compact optical imaging systems. To accelerate the development of large aperture micro-optics, we developed pyMOE, our own open-source software tool tailored for diffractive optics design and efficient large-scale simulation. This platform allows for the rigorous modelling of complex phase profiles and serves as the computational backbone for our versatile inverse-design workflows, where we explore non-intuitive design solutions through gradient optimization of our diffractive optics towards arbitrary functions. To bridge the gap between theoretical design and actual fabricated devices, we include our grayscale-based surface relief nanofabrication process constraints as boundary conditions in our optimization design flow, allowing us to achieve first-time-right performance yields.

While visible spectrum flat optics development remains largely driven by consumer and industrial electronics, our research extends into the Mid-Infrared (MIR), Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray regimes. These spectral bands are critical for gas sensing, thermal imaging, and next-generation lithography and nanometrology, where traditional bulky lens materials often fail, are inexistent, or become prohibitively expensive. By incorporating flat optics design methodologies and advanced optical materials, we can realize novel components that tackle these previously unexplored electromagnetic spectrums at scale, unlocks new possibilities for high-performance sensing and imaging, creating a clear pathway for integration into the next generation of industrial, consumer, and medical photonic devices.