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Roll-to-plate printable RGB achromatic metalens for wide-field-of-view holographic near-eye displays

Nature Materials volume 24, pages 535–543 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Metalenses show promise for replacing conventional lenses in virtual reality systems, thereby facilitating lighter and more compact near-eye displays (NEDs). However, at the centimetre scale necessary for practical applications, previous multiwavelength achromatic metalenses have faced challenges in mass production and exhibited a low numerical aperture (NA), which limits their practical application in NEDs. Here we introduce a centimetre-scale red, green and blue achromatic metalens fabricated using a roll-to-plate technique and explore its potential for practical applications in NEDs. This metalens is designed through topological inverse design utilizing a finite-difference time-domain simulation for entire areas (~10,000λ). Our design method demonstrates the ability to compensate chromatic aberrations even at the centimetre scale and high NA with low-index materials such as resin suitable for scalable manufacturing. In addition, we developed a compact NED by integrating the metalens with computer-generated holography (CGH). In this NED system, the high-NA metalens address the limitations of narrow field of view and extensive empty space typical of conventional CGH-based NEDs. The CGH optimization model further resolves the challenges of broadband operation and off-axis aberration in centimetre-scale red, green and blue achromatic metalenses.

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Fig. 1: Inverse design method based on topology optimization for RGB achromatic metalens.
Fig. 2: R2P manufacturing of RGB achromatic metalenses.
Fig. 3: Optical properties and imaging results of 1 cm diameter RGB (λ = 450, 532 and 635 nm) achromatic metalens.
Fig. 4: System setup and acquisition of CGH for correcting aberration.
Fig. 5: Experimental results before and after the optimization of spatial-variant aberration correction and speckle reduction.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code used for this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the POSCO-POSTECH-RIST Convergence Research Center programme funded by POSCO, an industry-academia strategic grant funded by Samsung Research, the Samsung Research Funding and Incubation Center for Future Technology grant (SRFC-IT1901-52) funded by Samsung Electronics, the National Research Foundation (NRF) grants (RS-2024-00462912, RS-2024-00356928, RS-2024-00416272, RS-2024-00337012, RS-2024-00408286, RS-2022-NR067559, RS-2022-NR068141) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) of the Korean government and the Korea Planning & Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) grant (no. 1415179744/20019169, Alchemist project) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) of the Korean government. J.K. acknowledges the Asan Foundation Biomedical Science fellowship. J.K. and Y.P. acknowledge the Presidential Science fellowship funded by the MSIT of the Korean government. Y.P. acknowledges the NRF M.S. fellowship (RS-2024-00460406) funded by the Ministry of Education (MOE) of the Korean government.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Minseok Choi, Joohoon Kim, Seokil Moon, Kilsoo Shin.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Minseok Choi, Joohoon Kim, Kilsoo Shin, Yujin Park, Dohyun Kang & Junsuk Rho

  2. Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Seokil Moon & Chang-Kun Lee

  3. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Seung-Woo Nam & Yoonchan Jeong

  4. Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology (RIST), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Gyoseon Jeon, Kyung-il Lee & Dong Hyun Yoon

  5. Department of Chemical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junsuk Rho

  6. Department of Electrical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junsuk Rho

  7. POSCO-POSTECH-RIST Convergence Research Center for Flat Optics and Metaphotonics, Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junsuk Rho

  8. National Institute of Nanomaterials Technology (NINT), Pohang, Republic of Korea

    Junsuk Rho

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Contributions

J.R. conceived the idea and initiated the project. J.R., M.C., J.K. and S.M. did theoretical studies and designed the whole experiments. M.C. and K.S. performed numerical simulations and optimizations of the metalenses. J.K., Y.P., D.K., G.J., K.-I.L. and D.H.Y. fabricated the metalenses. M.C., J.K. and K.S. performed the experimental characterizations and data analyses of the metalenses. S.M., S.N., Y.J. and C.L. designed and verified the CGH optimization model. S.M., S.N. and C.L. performed the experimental characterizations and data analyses of the NEDs. M.C., J.K., S.M. and J.R. mainly wrote the manuscript. All authors confirmed the final manuscript. J.R. guided the entire work.

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Correspondence to Junsuk Rho.

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Choi, M., Kim, J., Moon, S. et al. Roll-to-plate printable RGB achromatic metalens for wide-field-of-view holographic near-eye displays. Nat. Mater. 24, 535–543 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02121-0

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