Minimized two- and four-step varifocal lens based on silicon photonic integrated nanoapertures.

Integration of optical waveguide and subwavelength structure may help address the problems of large footprint, low robustness, and small operation bandwidth, those of that are typically inborn in traditional integrated optical devices. Here, a design method of an ultra-compact small footprint lens is proposed. Combing particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with spatial multiplexing technology, we successfully integrated two- and four-step varifocal lenses on SOIs chips with small footprint of 35×35 µm2, non-mechanically leading to 2.5× and 3.4× zoom capacity, respectively. The proposed designed method may shed a new light on compact on-chip display devices and offer an alternative approach to design integrated optical communication with high information storage capacity.