Industry Event
Vision Tech: Metasurfaces Beyond Metasurface Lenses
20 January 2026 • 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM PST | West Expo Stage 2 (Moscone West, Exhibit Level)
Metasurfaces are two-dimensional nanostructured materials that can be tailored to have strong light-matter interactions. Metasurfaces are almost entirely known for creating flat lenses. A conventional lens generally requires for its medium to be of changing thickness to generate a wavefront that focuses light. Differently, a metasurface lens has the capability of focusing light without any change in thickness of the material, the nanostructures shape the optical wavefront.
This talk will consist in defining metasurface lenses, which has attracted an immense amount of attention for the last few years from companies like Apple, Samsung, ST Microelectronics and Omnivision. However, metasurface lenses have only found strong applications in single wavelength operations at the moment due to the inadequacy of the technology for broadband light.
A new type of metasurface technology takes advantage of this inadequacy, namely metasurface filters, also called metafilters. Metafilters are in particular a strong candidate for substituting current colour filter array technology. Colour filter arrays (CFAs) are integrated on top of pixels in image sensors, and they alone capture colour detail in photos. Traditional CFAs are chemically manufactured from pigment-based materials and are required to be of a particular thickness due to their limited absorption cross-section. Indeed, their thickness along with the trend of smaller pixel sizes (in particular in the smartphone industry) invites colour defects, namely optical cross-talk. New metafilters will create a substantial change for image sensors both in quality of image and manufacturing.
Charles Altuzarra is the CEO and Cofounder of Metahelios. He holds a BS in Mathematics and a PhD in Physics from NTU in Singapore where his research was focused on plasmonic metamaterials and polarisation entangled photon optical systems. He was also post-doctoral associate at Texas A&M University’s Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering (IQSE) under Professors Marlan Scully and Girish S. Agarwal. His research span across several disciplines including Quantum interferometry, quantum and computational imaging, nanofabrication and super-resolution microscopy.
MENU: Coffee, decaf, and tea will be available nearby.
SETUP: Theater seating.
This talk will consist in defining metasurface lenses, which has attracted an immense amount of attention for the last few years from companies like Apple, Samsung, ST Microelectronics and Omnivision. However, metasurface lenses have only found strong applications in single wavelength operations at the moment due to the inadequacy of the technology for broadband light.
A new type of metasurface technology takes advantage of this inadequacy, namely metasurface filters, also called metafilters. Metafilters are in particular a strong candidate for substituting current colour filter array technology. Colour filter arrays (CFAs) are integrated on top of pixels in image sensors, and they alone capture colour detail in photos. Traditional CFAs are chemically manufactured from pigment-based materials and are required to be of a particular thickness due to their limited absorption cross-section. Indeed, their thickness along with the trend of smaller pixel sizes (in particular in the smartphone industry) invites colour defects, namely optical cross-talk. New metafilters will create a substantial change for image sensors both in quality of image and manufacturing.
Speaker
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Charles Altuzarra is the CEO and Cofounder of Metahelios. He holds a BS in Mathematics and a PhD in Physics from NTU in Singapore where his research was focused on plasmonic metamaterials and polarisation entangled photon optical systems. He was also post-doctoral associate at Texas A&M University’s Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering (IQSE) under Professors Marlan Scully and Girish S. Agarwal. His research span across several disciplines including Quantum interferometry, quantum and computational imaging, nanofabrication and super-resolution microscopy.
Event Details
FORMAT: Oral presentation followed by audience Q&A.MENU: Coffee, decaf, and tea will be available nearby.
SETUP: Theater seating.