STMicroelectronics and Metalenz collaborate to promote the popularization of metasurface optical devices

STMicroelectronics (ST), a developer of semiconductor technologies and Metalenz, which creates metasurface optics, have announced a new license agreement.
The companies intend to broaden ST’s capability to use Metalenz IP to produce advanced metasurface optics based on ST’s manufacturing platform combining 300mm semiconductor and optics production, test and qualification. (Any) fiancial details of the arrangement were not disclosed.

300mm metasurface optics manufactured by ST Microelectronics

“STMicroelectronics offers a combination of optics and semiconductor technology. Since 2022, we have shipped well over 140 million metasurface optics and FlightSense modules using Metalenz IP,” said Alexandre Balmefrezol, Executive Vice President and General Manager of STMicroelectronics’s Imaging Sub-Group.

‘New opportunities’

“The new license agreement with Metalenz bolsters our technology leadership in consumer, industrial and automotive segments, and will enable new opportunities from smartphone applications like biometrics, lidar and camera assist, to robotics, gesture recognition, or object detection,” he said.

“Our model, processing optical technology in our 300mm semiconductor fab, ensures high precision, cost-effectiveness, and scalability to meet the requests of our customers for high-volume, complex applications.”

Rob Devlin, co-founder and CEO of Metalenz, said, “Our agreement with STMicroelectronics has the potential to further fast-track the adoption of metasurfaces from their origins at Harvard to adoption by market leading consumer electronics companies.

“By enabling the shift of optics production into semiconductor manufacturing, this agreement has the possibility to further redefine the sensing ecosystem. As use cases for 3D sensing continue to expand, ST’s technology leadership in the market together with our IP leadership solidifies ST and Metalenz as the dominant forces in the emergent metasurface market we created,” said Devlin.

The license agreement aims to address the growing market opportunity for metasurface optics, which is projected to experience significant growth to reach $2 billion by 2029, according to Yole Group’s Optical Metasurfaces 2024 report. The growth will largely driven by the industry’s role in emerging display and imaging applications, says the report.

Background information

In 2022, metasurface technology from Metalenz, which spun out of Harvard and holds the exclusive license rights to the foundational Harvard metasurface patent portfolio, debuted with ST’s market leading direct Time-of-Flight (dToF) FlightSense modules.

Replacing the traditional lens stacks and shifting to metasurface optics instead has improved the optical performance and temperature stability of the FlightSense modules while reducing their size and complexity.

The use of 300mm wafers ensures high precision and performance in optical applications, as well as the inherent scalability and robustness advantage of semiconductor manufacturing process.

Source: optics.org