FABulous will develop an industrial surface ‘coating’ technology that exploits breakthroughs in multiphoton lithography and process modelling to manufacture high resolution 3D metasurfaces at a throughput viable for series production. These metasurfaces will be capable of manipulating light with unprecedented flexibility and will open the possibility of designing and manufacturing smaller, lighter, and more environmentally friendly products, through the replacement of bulky components and/or the chemical coatings currently used to enhance the efficiency and performance of optical products.
The project will explore novel methods for rapid (>10cm2/min) micro-fabrication of high-resolution (smaller than 200nm) 3D structures, and the development of new production tools to optimise the design and integration of the metasurfaces into functional products. These innovations will then be scaled for commercial applications and integrated into an industrial platform with a quality assurance and control system, enabling the fabrication of 3D metasurfaces on a range of substrates with unprecedented productivity, resolution, flexibility, and reliability.
The application of the technology and its potential to contribute to the design and manufacturing of more sustainable and circular European goods will also be demonstrated in a series of uses cases. The platform will be used to coat optical components (lenses, light pipes, and micro-optics arrays) with custom metasurfaces, and demonstrate that these components, when integrated into the design and manufacturing of functional optical systems (cameras, automotive lights and PV cells), can significantly improve their efficiency whilst in parallel reducing their environmental footprint.