Working with Airbus since 2014, Metamaterial Technologies (MTI; Dartmouth, NS, Canada) is close to commercializing a patented, metamaterial-based, laser-protection film called Lamda Guard metaAIR designed to protect pilots against cockpit laser strikes. The flexible, paper-thin, nearly transparent film is applied directly to any glass or plastic surface, like the inner surface of a cockpit windscreen, and selectively deflects specific wavelengths of light before they reach the interior of the aircraft.
Created from metamaterial polymer materials using lithographic and holographic nanopatterned designs with features as small as 5 nm, metaAIR materials can also incorporate silver nanoparticles, for example, to enhance plasmonic resonance and further control the electric and magnetic fields of a new structure. A multiphysics approach of patterning, stacking, and choosing the right background materials is used to create films in a scalable manufacturing process that deflect, block, enhance, or absorb electromagnetic radiation of a particular waveband. MTI's platform metamaterial technology can also be applied to protective eyewear, retractable visors, optical sensors, and even to enhance the accuracy of noninvasive medical devices at millimeter wavelengths (see www.gluco-wise.com). Reference: www.google.com/patents/WO2013054115A1?cl=en.
Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)
Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.