Flat Lens Ultraviolet Optics for Astrophysics

Wide field-of-view monitoring in the ultraviolet (UV; <350--400 nm) is an unexplored frontier in time-domain astrophysics, as highlighted in the most-recent Astro2020 Decadal report. Existing approaches to wide-field UV optics rely on a complex set of refractive or hybrid refractive-diffractive elements with a bulk and weight that make them costly to build and deploy in space. Compact flat-lens optics offer a novel approach that will be smaller, lighter, and potentially less expensive. Efforts to build flat-lens optics using nano-structured metalenses have thus far focused on the Visual and infrared (IR) bands. Because of the more stringent fabrication requirements and limited palette of UV-transparent materials, the largest UV metalens fabricated to date has a diameter ~6 mm (reported in 2024), after more than six years of prior efforts using this approach. A newer approach uses multi-level diffractive lenses (MDL) to achieve flat optics in the Visual and IR. Compared to metalenses, MDLs exhibit marked improvements in broad-band light-focusing efficiency. Even more importantly, they have relaxed fabrication requirements: their designs have larger constituent feature sizes and can often exploit radial symmetry, enabling faster production at lower costs. This program aims to advance UV flat lenses using the MDL approach. The scalability of the MDLs to larger aperture sizes will enable flat lens wide field-of-view UV optics to address key transient and multi-messenger astrophysics science in accordance with the Astro2020 report. This program aims to reach several benchmarks en route to enabling flat-lens based UV space monitors, including: (i) nano-fabrication and characterization of small (about 0.1 to 1 mm diameter) flat lens prototypes using an existing MDL UV design, with the goal of evaluating two UV-transparent materials, PMMA and UV-grade fused silica, for further development; and (ii) scaling up MDL UV prototypes to larger cm-scale diameter apertures. Each step would constitute "firsts" for flat lenses, to ultimately enable flat-lens based wide-field UV optics for space-based astrophysics.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.