Bioinspired Nanophotonic Angle-Independent and Ultralarge Light Dispersion Allowing Simultaneous Near-Infrared-Spectroscopy and Visible-Imaging

High-performance optical spectroscopy integrated into hand-held platforms, especially smartphones, is vital for numerous consumer applications. However, optical spectrometers pose a challenge for miniaturization due to the fundamental limitations of small- and angle-dependent light dispersion. We introduce a new bioinspired light dispersion technology combining disordered scattering nanostructures with ordered Bragg resonances to achieve an ultralarge and angle-independent dispersion. We demonstrate an ultracompact spectrometer using the bioinspired dispersive element enabling simultaneous wide-angle visible imaging and near-infrared spectroscopy on a single conventional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor image sensor. This approach reduces dispersion-based spectrometer device thickness or total track length below 5 mm with an angular tolerance of 30°, sub-5 nm spectral resolution, and 200 nm bandwidth, enabling hand-held and smartphone-integrated spectroscopy and opening up a new way to achieve high-performance mobile sensing and detection.