Kyocera develops meta-lens enabling wavelength-controlled focusing

15 Jan 2026

Company has also created wearable aerial display that “reproduces images with natural depth perception”.

Kyocera, a Japanese multinational ceramics and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Kyoto, has announced the development of a meta-lens that uses metasurface-based optical control technology to precisely manipulate focal positions depending on the wavelength of light.

Applying this technology, the company has created a prototype “Wearable Aerial Display” that achieves both a highly compact optical system and the ability to reproduce images with natural depth perception. The device made its world premiere last week at CES 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

Key features of Kyocera’s new meta-lens include:

• It enables smaller, lighter optical devices. A meta-lens is an ultra-thin optical component incorporating a metasurface — a dense arrangement of pillar-shaped meta-atoms smaller than the wavelength of light — to control light propagation. This structure allows Kyocera to manufacture a meta-lens less than 1 mm thick, compared with conventional optical lenses that typically require more than 10 mm of thickness.
• Additionally, by precisely designing the meta-atoms, multiple optical functions — such as wavelength control and phase modulation — can be integrated into a single meta-lens. This significantly reduces the number of optical components traditionally required. As a result, both the optical system and the final device can be made dramatically smaller and lighter.
• It enables image displays with natural depth perception. Using its proprietary “meta-atom design technology”, Kyocera has developed a meta-lens featuring a focal position that shifts depending on the wavelength of light. Using this lens, images of different colors can be formed at different heights — for example, green images appear farther from the viewer, while red images appear closer.
• By generating images at varying depths, the system produces three-dimensional aerial visuals with rich depth cues, even within a wearable-sized optical module. This innovation provides natural depth expression without the need for bulky multi-layer optical assemblies.

Wearable aerial display prototype

By combining the newly developed meta-lens with Kyocera’s existing aerial imaging technologies — developed via its research into high-resolution aerial displays — the company says it has succeeded in creating a compact, lightweight wearable display capable of projecting floating images with realistic depth. This is a step toward next-generation visual interfaces that integrate high-quality optics into small, body-worn devices.

Currently, Kyocera’s technology enables aerial images whose focal positions vary by wavelength. In the future, increasing the degree of wavelength control could allow full-color, high-resolution aerial images, and advances in meta-atom design may enable the projection of smooth 3D visuals into mid-air.

Potential applications include: more miniaturized and wearable VR/AR glasses; slimmer, space-saving designs for cameras and projectors; and other optical devices where compactness is essential.