IDTechEx has published a report titled “Metamaterial and Metasurface Markets Electromagnetic 2022-2042” which provides an in-depth overview of the metamaterial market. Metamaterials are structures with repetitive patterning controlling radiation and other inputs in a previously impossible fashion. Those inputs are mainly electromagnetic but can be mechanical, acoustic, etc. Most importantly, they provide lower cost, weight and size and better performance and life. That is within the megatrend to multi-functional laminar electronics and electrics achieving the previously impossible.

Currently, microwave frequencies of tens of GHz are a focus because that is the frequency being used by 5G, automotive radars, driverless cars, military targeting and various other new technologies. Each repeated pattern is called a meta-atom because it behaves rather like an atom when about one-tenth of the wavelength is being manipulated. For example, negative permittivity and negative magnetic permeability can give negative refractive index bending light and other radiation the wrong way.

Active components like diodes and transistors can be put in or behind each repeated pattern for greater virtuosity such as planned beam boosting, steering and focusing to your phone and even powering it as you use it. 6G communications in 2030 need those metasurfaces over buildings and inside walls. However, these cleverer things require active components like improved diodes and transistors near each pattern, later printed. Add computational, power supply, and other layers. Call them metasurfaces.

Aspiring and actual participants need to learn the emerging materials and processing challenges, gaps in the market, competitor assessments, twenty-year roadmaps, and forecasts in clear English. The report "Metamaterial and Metasurface Markets Electromagnetic 2022-2042" is a unique report as it is entirely commercially oriented rather than being academic or historical. It provides blunt assessment of which volume applications and which specialist applications are really likely to happen.

Businesses involving metasurfaces will now progress to becoming billion-dollar enterprises. That includes vertically-oriented ones making and using them for their security scanner, medical, or other activity. It also includes the newly-emerging need for horizontal marketing of optimized metasurfaces across all sectors as volumes make this worthwhile. For product quality, performance and affordability, the applicational-sector specialists must enter the very different world of optimized formulations, reel-to-reel manufacture, mass production themselves, or in partnership with those installing such capability.