Naturally evolved eyes have their strengths and weaknesses. Compound eyes allow insects to see over a wide range of angles, but the fixed focal length limits resolution and depth perception. Vertebrate eyes, on the other hand, are varifocal but have a small field of view. Zhuo-Chen Ma and colleagues have combined the two principles and made an artificial compound lens with variable focal length.
The lens comprises approximately 80 individual facets arranged in a hexagonal pattern — similar to a dragonfly eye — and was fabricated from the protein bovine serum albumin using direct laser lithography. The protein reacts to a change in the pH value of its environment by swelling or shrinking and therefore with a change of focus and of the viewing angle. But when the team placed the lens on top of a polymer dome, whose shape stayed unaltered, the field of view remained constant while the focus was adjusted.
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Meinzer, N. The best of both eyes. Nat. Phys. 15, 732 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0638-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0638-x