We built the tools we needed in the lab.

It started with a mask file

Six years ago we needed to fabricate flat optics for our own experiments, and there was no simple way to go from an idea to a mask. So we wrote one. pyMOE began as a small open-source library to generate the mask files for our grayscale lithography runs.

Making a mask was only half of it. We wanted to know how each design would behave before committing to overnight or weekend exposures, so we added propagation kernels to pyMOE. We made them fast and physically correct, and then did what experimentalists do: we checked them against the devices we made.

Then we made fabrication predictable

A model is only as good as the process behind it. Across several well-funded research projects, we characterized and improved our grayscale lithography and pattern transfer, run after run, until the result was predictable: down to 2% mean squared error from design to device topography.

That work is why we are proud to say: what you simulate is what you get.

Why Studio

Flat optics are hard to design. The physics is subtle, intuition takes years to build, and most design tools were made for specialists: powerful, but they ask for a large investment of money and time before they give anything back. And once the design is done, you still have to find someone else to make it.

We think software should work for you, not the other way around, and that learning should be easy. Bracara Studio puts our models and processes behind one intuitive workflow. Its fabrication-aware inverse design explores the whole fabrication parameter space to find the design that meets your target, and that our process can make. First time right.

What we offer

Design, simulate and optimize your flat optics in Studio, then order them from us. We fabricate in the INL cleanroom with the same processes our models were built on, from a single sample to small batches, to spec, with no surprises.

Start designing pyMOE on GitHub