For anyone wondering the obvious "tell me the downside/why it won't hit the markets anytime soon."

But the authors also found challenges for the field. The first of these is the ability to scale up to industrial processes that are compatible with the current industry standard CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) manufacturing techniques—especially because most meta-optical components rely on a transparent substrate, which CMOS is not.

Secondly, they found the ability to make tunable or reconfigurable metamaterials to enable dynamic components—just as the pixels on a TV screen can change color many times per second—was elusive.

"This is an unsolved problem that we put forward as the main challenge for the field. It's the key element for the field, everybody needs it now," Professor Neshev said.

"There is a misconception that it has been done—people do a small step and in their papers project to a faraway future. But no one can actually modulate the phase at a pixel level for a large array."

If these challenges can be solved then meta-optics technology has enormous potential, Professor Neshev said.

Looks incredibly interesting. Game changing, as posted, but those are some significant obstacles to overcome.