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The second optical metasurface revolution: moving from science to technology

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering volume 2, pages 125–143 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Optical metasurfaces are judiciously nanostructured thin films capable of manipulating the flow of light in a myriad of new ways. During the past two decades, we have witnessed a true revolution in the basic science that underlies their operation. As a result, these powerful optical elements can now deliver never-seen-before optical functions and transformed the way we think about light–matter interaction at the nanoscale. They also offer a favourable size, weight, power and cost metric compared to bulky optical elements such as lenses and prisms based on polished pieces of glass or moulded plastics. These valuable traits are especially relevant for use in many emerging applications, including wearable displays and sensors, autonomous navigation (robotics, automotive and aerospace), computational imaging, solar energy harvesting and radiative cooling. With the advent of advanced software and high-volume manufacturing processes, the promise of metasurfaces is becoming a practical reality and has already generated tremendous interest from industry. This Review discusses the rapid, recent advances towards transitioning metasurface science into real technologies, propelling the second metasurface revolution.

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Fig. 1: Industrialized nanofabrication steps and examples of printed optical metasurface structures using R2R nanoimprint.
Fig. 2: Metasurfaces for controlling structural colour, photodetection and light emission.
Fig. 3: Metasurface technology for biosensing.
Fig. 4: Metasurface-based depth sensing.
Fig. 5: Meta-optical computational systems for multi-modal imaging and computer vision tasks.
Fig. 6: Photon management for solar energy harvesting and thermal emission control.

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Acknowledgements

M.L.B. acknowledges support from a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-21-1-0312 and Department of Energy grant DE-FG07-ER46426. A.M. is supported by a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programme. F.C. acknowledges support from the Office of Naval Research (award number N00014-20-1-2450) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (award numbers FA9550-21-1-0312 and FA9550-22-1-0243). H.A.A. acknowledges support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (award number FA9550-21-1-0312) and from the Physical Behavior of Materials programme, Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy (grant number DE-FG02-07ER46405).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Mark L. Brongersma

  2. Meta Materials Inc., Pleasanton, CA, USA

    Ragip A. Pala

  3. School of Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Hatice Altug

  4. Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Federico Capasso & Wei Ting Chen

  5. Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Arka Majumdar

  6. Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Arka Majumdar

  7. Thomas J. Watson Laboratories of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Harry A. Atwater

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  1. Mark L. Brongersma
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All the authors researched the data for the article, substantially contributed to the discussion of content, and wrote, reviewed and edited the manuscript before submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark L. Brongersma.

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Competing interests

M.L.B. has served as a scientific advisor to Metamaterials, Inc. and is currently consulting for the startup company Imagia, Inc. (https://www.processingoptics.com/). R.A.P. served as the Vice President of Research and Development at Metamaterials, Inc. A.M. is a co-founder of the startup company Tunoptix. W.T.C. is Chief Technology Officer of the startup company SNOChip. F.C. is a board member of Metalenz (https://metalenz.com/), which he started in 2016 with his former graduate student R. Devlin, now its Chief Executive Officer.

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Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering thanks Gun-Yeal Lee and Alexander Friemann Dmitriev, who co-reviewed with Ihar Faniayeu, for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Related links

KolourOptik Stripe: https://metamaterial.com

Morphotonix: https://morphotonix.com/

SBIR and STTR programmes: https://www.sbir.gov/awards

SkyCool Systems: https://www.skycoolsystems.com/technology/

The ‘damascene process’ developed in the 1990s: https://www.ibm.com/history/copper-interconnects?mhsrc=ibmsearch_a&mhq=copper%20chip%20history

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Brongersma, M.L., Pala, R.A., Altug, H. et al. The second optical metasurface revolution: moving from science to technology. Nat Rev Electr Eng 2, 125–143 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-024-00136-4

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