Flat optics: when lenses become chips

For centuries, optics has meant curved, polished glass: bulky, hard to align, and made one piece at a time. Flat optics changes the rules.

By patterning a surface with nanostructures smaller than the wavelength of light, a single flat layer can focus, steer, filter and shape light, combining functions that once required a stack of lenses.

And because these structures are built with the same wafer-scale processes as computer chips, optics can finally follow the semiconductor playbook: high volume, tight integration with sensors and light sources, and falling cost.

This talk shows how imec is turning that promise into manufacturable technology, and what it unlocks, from thinner cameras and lighter AR glasses to compact LiDAR and medical sensing.