Press Release: Shin-Etsu Chemical and SCIVAX jointly achieve the mass production of Amtelus®, the world’s smallest light emitting device for 3D sensors

Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Tokyo; President: Yasuhiko Saitoh; hereinafter, “Shin-Etsu Chemical”) has developed a material that makes possible the mass production of Amtelus®, a light source for 3D sensors developed by SCIVAX Corporation (Head Office: Kawasaki City; President and CEO: Satoru Tanaka; hereinafter, “SCIVAX”). The delivery of evaluation samples of Amtelus® will start in November 2024, and the sales of the products will be conducted by Shin-Etsu Chemical.

SCIVAX has so far sold Platanus®, an optical lens that diffuses and radiates light uniformly, for the 3D sensor light emitting sources that are used in automotive and other various applications, contributing to improving sensor performance. Meanwhile, in recent years, the areas in which 3D sensing technology is utilized have grown wider, calling for light emitting device to be more highly integrated and to have higher performance. However, it was difficult to reduce mounting areas using the conventional cavity structure, which posed one of the major unsolved issues.

To solve this issue, Shin-Etsu Chemical has developed a high-hardness material that can be processed by dicing, and that has both necessary optical properties and a sealing capability to protect devices. Using this material, SCIVAX has successfully developed Amtelus®, the world’s smallest light emitting device that incorporates the functions of Platanus®. This device has achieved a significantly smaller size compared with conventional devices having a mounting area of 1 mm2 or less, 10 times smaller than conventional devices, and with half or less of the thickness.

The main features of Amtelus® are as follows:

• Minimum size
  It minimizes the mounting area of a light-emitting device, enabling its application in devices such as AR glasses and smartphones, for which installation has been difficult. In addition, using multiple Amtelus® modules can achieve finer sensing.
• Flexibility of light emission
  The optical lens Platanus® can provide various types of irradiation fields with a high degree of design freedom, enabling various types of irradiation, such as over a wide range of 140 degrees or more or with a high aspect ratio (120 deg × 30 deg). By using this technology, Amtelus® device with various irradiation fields can be designed according to customers’ requests.
• Low cost
  A light emitting device and a lens are integrally molded into this resin package, for which nanoimprint technology with high mass productivity has been applied to form the lens. For this reason, it boasts a large cost advantage over conventional products.