Practical Implementations of Metasurfaces and Challenges in Scaling Production

Jan 11, 2022 Metasurfaces are optical elements that consist of sub-wavelength features on a planar substrate. With appropriate design, metasurfaces can be tailored to achieve a variety of optical functions, spanning both traditional use cases and emerging technologies. As a consequence, they have gathered considerable interest across the automotive, medical, and consumer electronic markets. Although metasurfaces supply an exceptionally flexible platform to offer solutions in these domains, system-level requirements enforce limits on the scope of their practical implementation. Additionally, in order to supply such large markets, several process technologies are being developed to transition the fabrication of metasurfaces from current lab-scale demonstrations to consumer-level production volumes.

After an introduction to the principles of metasurfaces, Pawel Latawiec provides insights into their practical implementation. He focuses on the role metasurfaces can play in 3D-sensing for consumer electronics, highlighting the step-change improvements they deliver in form and function. Additionally, he explores how high-volume semiconductor foundries can be leveraged to produce metasurface optical elements en masse and provides a cursory overview of the unique challenges and opportunities metasurfaces offer.

***This presentation premiered during the 2022 Photonics Spectra Conference. For more information on Photonics Media conferences, visit events.photonics.com.  

About the presenter:
Pawel Latawiec, Ph.D., is the Vice President of Design and Computation at Metalenz, where he leads metasurface design and engineering efforts. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a doctorate in applied physics from Harvard University. His current focus is on constructing novel architectures for metasurface imaging and illumination, as well as on developing computational techniques for scalable, objective-first design and fabrication.