Metalenz Manufactures Modern Single-Lens Camera System

Metalenz, a new technology company emerging from stealth mode has decided to manufacture a smartphone camera that takes small space, collects more light for brighter photos, and can even enable new forms of sensing on phones.

The new technology is looking to disrupt smartphone cameras with a single, flat lens system that utilizes a technology called optical metasurfaces.

Metalenz's design uses a single lens built on a glass wafer that is between 1x1 to 3x3 millimeter in size. When observed closely under a microscope, nanostructures are seen measuring one-thousandth the width of a human hair.

Nanostructures bend light rays in a way that compensates for many of the shortcomings of the single-lens camera system.

The resulting quality derived from Matalenz's single-lens camera system is as sharp as that of a multi-lens system and the nanostructures attributes reduce or eliminate many image degrading aberrations common to traditional cameras. 

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CEO Robert Devlin and cofounder Federico Capasso founded the core technology formed through a decade of research at Harvard University in 2017.

Devlin said the Metalenz camera can deliver more light back to the image sensor, allowing for brighter and sharper images than what you'd get with traditional lens elements and the design of the new single-lens camera doesn't conserve space.

Metalenz will go into mass production toward the end of the year. Its first application will be to serve as the lens system of a 3D sensor in a smartphone. (The company did not give the name of the phone maker.).