Metalenz, an early-stage US company focused on bringing metamaterial technology to mass-market consumer applications, has announced a partnership with Samsung Electronics to pair Samsung's leading image sensors with emerging Metalenz products for mobile facial recognition technology.

Under the agreement, Metalenz will use Samsung's ISOCELL Vizion 931 global shutter sensor as the image sensor for its Polar ID camera, which will make its debut at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. The Polar ID system relies on specialized polarization-sensing metamaterials to assemble a person's "polarization signature" from a single image for facial recognition.

Metalenz claims that its metamaterial-based Polar ID can "reduce volume and cost by 50% compared to traditional facial unlock solutions," according to the press release announcing the partnership. The company believes that working with Samsung will help achieve the scale needed to "drive rapid adoption" of smartphones.

Founded by CEO Rob Devlin in 2016 as a spin-off from the Federico Capasso lab at Harvard University, a key incubator for Metasurface and Metalens technology, Metalenz has been focused on the manufacturability of Metasurfaces in semiconductor foundries since branching out. In an interview with OPN in 2023, Devlin said, "You have to remember, you don't just want it to be interesting. You want to be able to do it at the end of the day, and you want to be able to make it cost-effective, repeatable, etc."

Since its inception, Metalenz has achieved significant success in using optical Metasurfaces as a tool to shrink and simplify sensors in consumer electronics devices. For example, the company announced in mid-2022 that its flat lens device would be part of the widely used VL53L8 direct time-of-flight (dToF) sensor from semiconductor manufacturer ST Microelectronics. Metalenz described this development as the first time Metasurface technology was used in a consumer electronics device. Meanwhile, the company has added financial resources (completing a $30 million Series B funding round at the end of 2022) and increased staff.

Smartphone Polar ID

In recent years, Metalenz has particularly focused on polarization sensing through a module based on metamaterials, trademarked as PolarEyes. The Polar ID camera system for smartphone facial recognition applications represents the first critical product realization of its polarization-sensing metamaterials.

Actually launched by Metalenz at Qualcomm's annual "Snapdragon Summit" in October 2023, the Polar ID system combines the company's polarization image sensor with "post-processing algorithms and complex machine learning models" to capture what the company calls a person's "unique polarization signature" from a single image.

According to Metalenz, the ultra-thin metamaterials have significant advantages over other facial recognition solutions that rely on structured light and pattern lighting in terms of compactness and power consumption. Notably, Metalenz states that the Polar ID is "the only consumer imaging system capable of perceiving the complete polarization state of light," extracting detailed polarization information from a single image.

Scale for "millions of phones"

Metalenz says the partnership with Samsung brings an opportunity to combine polarization sensing with the most advanced image sensors in smartphones. Reportedly, the Samsung ISOCELL Vizion 931 is optimized for eye tracking and facial detection applications, with industry-leading quantum efficiency in the 850-940nm near-infrared wavelength range used for these applications.

Aside from these technical advantages, Devlin also emphasizes the scale benefits of combining his company's metal sensor technology with Samsung's most advanced image sensors. In the press release, Devlin said, "Polar ID will bring secure facial unlocking to millions of phones and new sensing to millions of people. The partnership with Samsung marks a new era for mobile vision systems and provides Metalenz with a partner with the quality and scale required to apply Polar ID to all phones."