SCIVAX Corporation and Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. have jointly developed Amtelus®, a light source device for 3D sensors and technology for its mass production. The delivery of evaluation samples of Amtelus® will start in November 2024. Meanwhile, Shin-Etsu Chemical will handle sales of the products.

So far, SCIVAX has sold Platanus®, an optical lens that diffuses and radiates light uniformly, as the 3D sensor light source used in automotive and other various applications, contributing to improving sensor performance. Meanwhile, in recent years, the areas in which 3D sensing technology is utilized have grown wider. Thus, this calls for light source devices to be more highly integrated and to have higher performance. However, it was difficult to reduce the footprint using the conventional cavity structure, which posed one of the major unsolved issues.

To solve this issue, Shin-Etsu Chemical has developed a high-hardness material that can be processed by dicing. Also, it has both necessary optical properties and a sealing capability to protect devices. Using this material, SCIVAX has successfully developed Amtelus®, the world’s smallest light source device that incorporates the functions of Platanus®. This device has achieved a significantly smaller size compared with conventional devices having a mounting area of 1mm² or less, 10 times smaller than conventional devices, and with half or less of the thickness.

The main features of Amtelus® are as follows:

Minimum size

It minimizes the mounting area of a light-emitting device. Thus, it enables application in devices such as AR glasses and smartphones, for which installation has been difficult. In addition, using multiple Amtelus® modules can achieve more precise sensing.

Flexibility of light emission

The optical lens Platanus® can provide various types of irradiation fields with a high degree of design flexibility, enabling various types of irradiation, such as over a wide range of 140 degrees or more or with a high aspect ratio (120 deg × 30 deg). By using this technology, Amtelus® modules with various irradiation fields can be designed according to customers’ requests.

Cost competitiveness

By utilizing advanced nanoimprint mass production technology, the lenses are integrated with the light source in a resin package, which provides higher cost competitiveness compared to conventional products.

Shin-Etsu Chemical and SCIVAX are considering expanding the applications of this technology in the future to various fields, such as next-generation life science, mainly vital sensors.

-04 November 2024-