Growth in metasurfaces market spurs Metalenz to expand patent portfolio

Metalenz has expanded its product and patent portfolio to encompass metasurface technology and system level applications for secure biometrics.

A release from the Boston-based semiconductor optics firm says that, with an exclusive worldwide license to metasurface IP developed in the Capasso Lab at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Metalenz’s patent portfolio now has over 150 patents and applications, covering “the design and manufacture of metasurfaces, as well as chips, modules, products, and image processing.”

Metasurfaces are artificially engineered, two-dimensional materials designed to control the behavior of electromagnetic waves. Researchers at SEAS have engineered metasurfaces to manipulate light based on its polarization state – the geometrical orientation of oscillations against the direction of the wave.

In a paper from 2021, Federico Capasso, a professor of applied physics and senior research fellow in electrical engineering at SEAS, describes a metasurface that “can encode an unlimited number of holographic images or manipulate light in virtually infinite number of directions based on a very large number of polarization states.”

Metalenz CEO Rob Devlin, says that, by enabling the shift of optics production into semiconductor manufacturing, “the metasurface innovation developed in the Capasso Lab and commercialized by Metalenz has redefined the sensing ecosystem.”

Metasurface market to reach $2B in revenue by 2029: Yole Group

Per the Metalenz release, “3rd party teardowns by Yole Group have revealed metasurfaces in smartphones and tablets made by top consumer OEMs, confirming widespread mass market adoption of this new optical technology projected to exceed $2 billion in revenue by 2029.”

An academic paper newly published in Next Research explores applications for metasurfaces, including biomedical imaging, material analysis, autonomous vehicles, laser beams, remote sensing, security and surveillance systems and polarization-encoded communication systems that “harness the unique properties of polarized light to transmit and encode information,” among others.

Metalenz will continue to build on its core products, integrating polarization-based metasurfaces into consumer use cases for image sensing. It already has patents for single element dot pattern projectors and facial recognition with polarization, which it says “enable more compact 3D sensing and biometric solutions that simplify and enhance performance across a range of high-volume consumer and industrial markets.”

“We’re expanding the market for metasurface optics and use cases in consumer sensing,” says Devlin, “and will continue to build on our foundational technology as we design complete solutions around our metasurface optic for secure biometrics and new applications of polarization.”

Article Topics

biometrics  |  metalens  |  Metalenz  |  metasurface  |  patents  |  research and development  |  smartphones