Achromatic metalenses for full visible spectrum with extended group delay control via dispersion-matched layers

Achieving achromaticity across the visible light spectrum is crucial for metalenses in imaging systems. Single-layer metalenses struggle with weak focusing power or small aperture sizes due to inadequate group delay control. Multilayer metalenses offer some improvement but come with increased design and fabrication complexity. Here, we demonstrate a strategy using meta-atoms with material layers engineered for matching dispersion, allowing large and fine adjustments of group delay. Our design substantially broadens the group delay range, allowing us to experimentally demonstrate several polarization-independent metalenses operating across the entire visible spectrum (400-700 nm). We design, fabricate, and characterize achromatic metalenses with aperture diameters of 16 μm, 66 μm, 200 μm, and 400 μm, and numerical apertures of 0.27, 0.11, 0.04, and 0.02, respectively. Among them, the 400-μm diameter, 0.02-numerical-aperture metalens is used to demonstrate full-color imaging capabilities. Our results exhibit diffraction-limited performance, high efficiency, and accurate full-color image reproduction. Researchers created a metalens focusing all visible light equally across 400–700 nm by engineering meta-atoms with dispersion-matched layers. This improves group delay control, enabling efficient, large-aperture achromatic metalenses for practical use.