Smaller camera lenses, better facial recognition.
As seamlessly as iPhone’s Face ID allows users to securely authenticate their identity, this particular feature comes with its own array of setbacks — one of which includes the noticeable notch sitting at the top of the screen.
Introducing Metalenz
Out of Harvard University, Metalenz is a company that believes its approach is superior in handling facial biometrics. Its new lens technology implements polarized light for added security that is often hidden beneath the screen of a typical smartphone.
As the company name implies, Metalenz was founded on the mission of delivering new solutions in both metasurfaces and metalenses that promise to revolutionize the industry’s approach to the development of lenses and cameras that have been implemented for more than 150 years.
Brief History of Camera Technology
The majority of cameras including the ones attached to the front and back of smartphones rely on a lens composed of several stacked elements which are all strategically arranged and shaped to bend light, all directing towards a sensor with minimal aberrations and distortions.
Such an approach is effective in the production of sharp and clean images, but at the cost of size. The more elements to the lens, the better the capture. This is why you see lenses on professional DSLR cameras sized larger than the camera itself, and why modern smartphone cameras have a significant bump on the back of the devices.
So Then What Are Metalenses?
An exacting process is required for the manufacturing of camera lenses, as elements must be perfectly polished and curved to redirect and bend light passing through. This is why exceptional lenses for cameras cost upwards of thousands of dollars.
Metalenses are designed to take an entirely new approach to this problem. Instead of mathematically-perfect curved and smooth finishes, metalenses have completely flat, thin surfaces covered in innumerable nanostructures of microscopic size; laid out in patterns that appear much like a group of concentric circles.
The nanostructures effectively match the intended behavior of traditional curved surfaces but only require a standalone metalens to produce results equivalent to if not better than existing lens technology.
Consequently, the benefits are abundant. First of all, they can be manufactured by the millions on a day-to-day basis utilizing the same equipment implemented in the development of microchips which makes them a far cheaper alternative. Furthermore, a single lens allows more light to hit the sensor of a camera thereby drastically improving the ability to capture a photo in the dark.
Perhaps most importantly, however, metalenses offer the prospect of eliminating the nasty camera bumps found on modern smartphones and inevitably that unwanted notch sitting at the top of iPhone screens.