Leading chipmaker STMicroelectronics has forged a new license agreement with Metalenz, which pioneers metasurface optics.

Accordingly, this broadens ST’s capability to use Metalenz IP to produce advanced metasurface optics while leveraging ST’s unique technology. Specifically, combining 300mm semiconductor and optics production, test and qualification.

Alexandre Balmefrezol, Executive Vice President and General Manager of STMicroelectronics’s Imaging Sub-Group, said the company has been the unique supplier of modules that combines optics and semiconductor technology. In fact, since 2022, ST has already shipped over 140 million metasurface optics and the company’s proprietary FlightSense modules using the Metalenz IP.

The new license agreement with Metalenz, Balmefrezol said, bolsters ST’s leadership in consumer, industrial, and automotive segments. This will enable new opportunities from smartphone applications like biometrics, LIDAR and camera assist, to robotics, gesture recognition, or object detection.  

“Our unique 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,” said Balmefrezol.

Innovative Metasurface Optics

Since 2022, Metalenz, a fabless semiconductor optics startup that spun out of Harvard, holds the exclusive license rights to the Harvard metasurface patent portfolio.

Nowadays, products such as in consumer fields, specifically smartphones, are integrated with critical technologies, such as advanced optical sensing technology, as a differentiating capabilities. Among its useful applications include cameras, eye detection, facial recognition, image detection in low-light condition, among others.

Therefore, as devices that adopt this technology need to have more functionalities to drive further innovations, there is a need for this optical sensing technology to be smaller, lighter, and simpler. However, current optical sensing technologies are characterized by complex and multi-element lenses.

For that reason, the metasurface technology of Metalenz replaces the traditional lens stacks with its patented metasurface optics, which have planar surfaces that consist of tiny, nanoscale with precise structures. Moreover, this technology also brings performance and at the same time reduces power consumption, size, and cost to various applications in the consumer, automotive, and industrial segments.

Meanwhile, 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.

Rob Devlin, co-founder and CEO of Metalenz said 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. Thus, the agreement, Devlin added, has the potential to further fast-track the adoption of metasurfaces in leading consumer electronics companies.

12 July 2025