fabrication:
Fabrication is using processes to create component parts that can be used to make a product or structure, as well as the process of constructing an item from standardised parts. Manufacturing, meanwhile, is the processing of raw materials into a finished product that can be sold to a consumer.
The researchers integrate this simulator into a design framework, along with another digital simulator that emulates the performance of the fabricated device in downstream tasks, such as producing images with computational cameras. These connected simulators enable a user to produce an optical device that better matches its design and reaches the best task performance.
This technique could help scientists and engineers create more accurate and efficient optical devices for applications like mobile cameras, augmented reality, medical imaging, entertainment, and telecommunications. And because the pipeline of learning the digital simulator utilizes real-world data, it can be applied to a wide range of photolithography systems.
"This idea sounds simple, but the reasons people haven't tried this before are that real data can be expensive and there are no precedents for how to effectively coordinate the software and hardware to build a high-fidelity dataset," says Cheng Zheng, a mechanical engineering graduate student who is co-lead author of an open-access paper describing the work posted to the arXiv preprint server.
"We have taken risks and done extensive exploration, for example, developing and trying characterization tools and data-exploration strategies, to determine a working scheme. The result is surprisingly good, showing that real data work much more efficiently and precisely than data generated by simulators composed of analytical equations. Even though it can be expensive and one can feel clueless at the beginning, it is worth doing."
Photolithography involves manipulating light to precisely etch features onto a surface, and is commonly used to fabricate computer chips and optical devices like lenses. But tiny deviations during the manufacturing process often cause these devices to fall short of their designers' intentions.
The experiments conducted showcased the light-controlling capabilities of metamaterials generated through the team’s process. Notably, there was a significant reduction in scattered light within the visible region. This research marks the first instance of verifying the optical properties of metamolecules in solution using the millimeter-sized structures. This approach allows for results to be observed with the naked eye or through a simple microscope setup, eliminating the need for specialized equipment for verification. Additionally, the team achieved fine-tuned control over the optical properties by adjusting the ratio of silica and gold nanoparticles within the metamaterial.
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