Flies have compound eyes with a unique optical structure that gives them a field of view of up to 180°. In conventional optics, only fish-eye lenses have a comparable field of view, but these have a complex arrangement of internal lenses that make them expensive.
Now Luke Lee, a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley, US, has developed a way of making tiny compound eye structures that self assemble.
Compound eyes are formed from a large number of honeycomb-like tubes that guide light towards a sensor. Lee first creates a honeycomb pattern of micro-lenses by placing droplets of a polymer onto a sheet and allowing them to form lens shapes under their own surface tension. This sheet of hexagonal lenses is then deformed into a dome shape.
The result is a tiny compound eye structure that Lee says could revolutionise micro-imaging by providing an accurate fly’s-eye view of the world for the first time.
Read the full self-assembling fly eye patent application.
Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant