Behind every laser power beaming demo is a dense stack of physics, materials science and clever engineering. As the field pushes toward higher efficiencies and longer ranges in 2026, much of the innovation is happening in the invisible details: nanoscale metasurfaces, highly specialized photovoltaic cells and relay architectures that turn beams into chains.

Sculpting Light: From Gaussian Spots to Flat-Top Beams

Traditional lasers emit Gaussian beams that are brightest in the center and fade toward the edges. That profile is convenient for many applications, but it wastes precious energy when you are trying to illuminate a PV receiver evenly. Metasurfaces and advanced diffractive optics are changing that.

Recent demonstrations show that carefully engineered metasurface transmitters can turn Gaussian inputs into flat-top beams that maintain uniform intensity over the receiver area, improving effective power conversion by as much as 15–20 percent without increasing risk at the center spot. SPIE Digital Library+2AIP Publishing Other work explores Airy and Bessel-like beams that self-heal after encountering turbulence or partial obstructions, inspired by similar advances in underwater optical communications. Nature

On the receiver side, metasurface lenses and energy-focusing arrays concentrate incoming light onto tiny active regions, allowing designers to shrink and lighten PV modules for drones, robots and mobile platforms. A 2025 study on metasurface-based WPT for compact unmanned mobilities showed how an integrated lens and rectifier system could dramatically boost received power in a form factor small enough for insect-scale robots. Wiley Online Library

Photovoltaic Receivers Enter Their Laser-Native Era

The PV receivers in laser WPT systems are fundamentally different from rooftop solar panels. Instead of capturing a broad spectrum of sunlight, they are optimized for a single, narrow wavelength. This allows designers to use exotic semiconductor stacks and vertical multi-junction architectures that would be impractical in mainstream solar.

Recent reviews of high-power optical photovoltaic transmission describe how GaAs-based multi-junction cells and vertical multi-junction designs can achieve theoretical conversion efficiencies approaching 80 percent under monochromatic illumination, provided thermal management is carefully handled. ScienceDirect In practice, state-of-the-art receivers already exceed 40–50 percent efficiency in controlled environments, and incremental improvements in epitaxial growth, bandgap engineering and heat sinking are pushing that figure higher each year.

Thermal issues are not trivial. In a successful DARPA POWER test, roughly 20 percent of the incoming laser energy was converted to electricity; the rest became heat that had to be dissipated without damaging the receiver. pv magazine USA Advanced receivers now integrate micro-channel cooling, high-conductivity substrates and reflective coatings to shed unused energy while keeping the PV junction at its optimal operating temperature.

Relays, Drones and “Optical Transformers”

Beyond the transmitter and receiver, 2026-era architectures add a third, crucial layer: relays. Where classic power grids use transformers and substations, laser WPT networks rely on optical relay nodes—some stationary, some drone-mounted—to catch and redirect beams.

The DARPA POWER roadmap envisions a future “energy web” in which networks of airborne relays stitch together links over 100-mile scales, delivering several kilowatts to front-line units while keeping heavy generators safely in the rear. NextBigFuture.com Space startups are adapting the same idea, proposing orbital constellations of power satellites that pass beams between themselves and toward customers on the ground or in cislunar space. Star Catcher’s concept of a “space energy grid” built from optical power beaming nodes is a prime example. Star Catcher

These relay architectures introduce new challenges—synchronizing pointing, managing hand-offs, maintaining beam quality through multiple bounces—but they also unlock a key promise of laser WPT: the ability to put generation wherever it is most efficient and consumption wherever it is most useful, with flexible, software-defined routing in between.

AI-Driven Beam Control as the New Power Electronics

In traditional wired grids, power electronics manage load balancing, voltage regulation and frequency stability. In optical grids, AI-driven beam control plays a similar role. Cameras and lidar monitor both endpoints and the beam path, feeding data to control loops that adjust pointing, divergence, power and beam profile thousands of times per second.

Recent adaptive OWPT experiments demonstrate systems that can automatically search for the best receive position, lock onto multiple moving receivers and dynamically throttle or re-aim beams as users appear or disappear. Optica Combined with safety subsystems that instantly cut power when a foreign object enters the path, these controls turn raw lasers into reliable, utility-grade infrastructure.

As deployment scales, beam orchestration becomes a networking problem. Control algorithms must coordinate dozens or hundreds of beams, avoiding collisions in both space and spectrum, just as Wi-Fi networks manage overlapping channels. Research communities in wireless communications, especially those working on metasurface-based “smart surfaces,” are increasingly crossing over into the power beaming domain. AIP Publishing

Closing Thoughts and Looking Forward

If Article 1 described why laser WPT is suddenly commercially interesting, this article explains how that progress is happening under the hood. Metasurfaces reshape light, multi-junction receivers squeeze more electricity out of every photon, and AI-driven relays weave beams into networks that resemble a new kind of grid.

By 2026, the once esoteric device physics behind laser power beaming will be abstracted away behind APIs and service-level agreements. But understanding the underlying innovations matters. They determine which wavelengths are safest, which receivers work best on drones versus in data centers, and how far we can push the dream of routing power as flexibly as bits. The more these components mature, the more credible scenarios like lunar power grids, drone refueling webs, and cable-free smart cities become.

Reference sites

Energy Focusing Metasurface-Based Wireless Power Transfer System for Compact Unmanned Mobilities – Advanced Optical Materials (Wiley) – https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adom.202500378

Metamaterials and Metasurfaces for Wireless Power Transfer and Energy Harvesting – University of Liverpool Repository – https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3143962/1/Metamaterials%20for%20WPT_Final_All_in_One.pdf

High-Power Optical Photovoltaic Transmission: Towards a New Wireless Energy Paradigm – Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (Elsevier) – https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403212500704X

Near-Field Beam Focusing for Wireless Power Transfer – Weizmann Institute of Science – https://www.weizmann.ac.il/math/yonina/sites/math.yonina/files/Near-Field%20Beam%20Focusing%20for%20Wireless%20Power.pdf

Metasurface-Based Wireless Communication Technology – Journal of Applied Physics (AIP Publishing) – https://pubs.aip.org/aip/jap/article/135/12/120702/3279036/Metasurface-based-wireless-communication

Author and Co-Editor:
Benoit Lafrance, – Wireless Power Transfer Technologies, Montreal, Quebec;
Peter Jonathan Wilcheck, Co-Editor, Miami, Florida.

#Metasurfaces #LaserPV #OpticalRelays #EnergyWeb #BeamControl #AIOptics #VerticalMultiJunction #Photonics #WirelessGrid #PowerBeamingPhysics