Amidst the mixed news surrounding the feasibility of Augmented Reality (AR) smart glasses, the demand for commercially viable mass production of industry-standard optical waveguide combiners remains unwavering. Over the past two years, our consortium of companies has proposed a cost-effective and scalable manufacturing process for Surface Relief Grating (SRG) based waveguides, offering a comprehensive path from concept to fabrication through large-area nanoimprinting. This approach has garnered significant interest from both customers and partners associated with the participating companies. Our aim is to push beyond the established limits of large-area nanoimprinting. In this work we address the obstacles and latest advancements in maintaining imprint quality, fidelity and uniformity during large-area nanoimprinting. We demonstrate various building blocks that are crucial to manufacture high quality and cost-effective AR waveguides, such as the replication of slanted gratings and the possibility of low residual layer thickness using large-area nanoimprint lithography. We employ high refractive index materials, such as resin and glass (1.8, 1.9 and 2.0), and also explore a lighter and flatter version of the RealView 1.9 glass. Our primary objective is to demonstrate that large-area nanoimprinting not only presents itself as a novel method for high-volume manufacturing of SRG waveguides but also enables the production of challenging optics for AR smart glasses.
Nanoimprinting of surface-relief grating-based waveguides has the potential to produce one of the industry-leading augmented reality (AR) smart glasses, but there are still many challenges in the design, scaling, and reproducibility of these imprinted waveguides. A promising path toward mass manufacturing of optical waveguide combiners is via large-area nanoimprinting. Here, we present the complete value chain with partners involved throughout the process: from design, mastering, and materials to imprinting and metrology, to prove that this method improves not only the manufacturing throughput but also the waveguide quality. We demonstrate that the replication and image quality are true to the intended design using large area, high refractive index (n = 1.9), square (300 mm × 300 mm) glass substrates with high-refractive index resins (n = 1.9). This is shown to be valid for over 100 replications and for large area nanoimprinting (Gen5, 1100 mm × 1300 mm). Our goal is to demonstrate a viable path toward high-volume and low-cost manufacturing of AR waveguides based on surface relief gratings.
Nanoimprinting of surface-relief grating-based waveguides has the potential to result in the best performing Augmented Reality (AR) smart glasses, but there are still many challenges in the design, scaling, and reproducibility of these imprinted waveguides. We presented a promising path toward mass manufacturing of optical waveguide combiners via large-area nanoimprinting at SPIE AR/VR/MR 2022. This alternative route for manufacturing surface-relief gratings on a larger area generated much interest. This follow-up paper presents a further optimized design based on the lessons learned from the previous paper, with a particular focus on quality. The complete value chain with partners is involved throughout the process of this iterative update: from design, mastering, and materials to imprinting and metrology, to prove that this method improves not only the manufacturing throughput but also the waveguide quality. We demonstrate that both the replication and image quality is true to the intended design using large area, high refractive index (1.9 RI), square (300 x 300mm) glass substrates with high refractive index resins (1.9 RI). Our objective is to further establish this new approach towards high-volume and low-cost manufacturing of waveguides based on surface relief gratings as a viable path forward for enabling the Metaverse.
Experiments in the field of high-precision optical metrology are crucially limited by thermal noise of the optical components such as mirrors or beam splitters. Amorphous coatings stacks are found to be a main source for these thermal fluctuations. In this contribution we present approaches to realize coating free optical components based on resonant high contrast gratings (HCGs) made of crystalline silicon. It is shown that beside classical cavity mirrors the concept of HCGs can also be used for reflective cavity couplers. We compare the advantages and challenges of these HCG reflectors with distributed Bragg reflectors made of crystalline coatings for applications in optical metrology.
We present novel filter elements with an asymmetric angle dependent transmission based on high-contrast gratings.
Asymmetric means a different efficiency for positive and negative incidence angles. Our approach provides the realization of asymmetric direction selective filters by using blaze-like grating structures combined with subwavelength
high contrast gratings respectively grating periods in the resonance domain. We also discuss the influence of the effective medium theory on the transmission function depending on the angle of the incident light. For realization of those high contrast gratings Silicon is chosen as material with high refractive index and adequate compatibility with semiconductor fabrication.
We report on novel concepts for reflective diffractive elements based on high-contrast gratings. To demonstrate
the possibilities for such devices reflective cavity couplers with three output ports are investigated. A diffracting
period is superposed to a highly reflective subwavelength grating in order to realize diffractive elements. This
superposition can be realized with a periodic depth, fill factor or period modulation of the reflector. Further, to
limit the total transmission of the device it is necessary to enhance its angular tolerance. We discuss different
approaches in order to realize this increased reflectivity in broad range of the angular spectrum. The contribution
focuses on the material combination silicon-silica, but the presented concepts also hold for other material
combinations with large index contrast and even for monolithic silicon structures.
We introduce concepts for direction selective transmission filters based on dielectric high-contrast gratings. The
devices act as angular bandpass filters at an incidence angle of 45° with a total transmission of 68% and a full
width at half maximum of 20°. Since the filters are based on a material combination of silicon and silicon dioxide
they provide an excellent compatibility to well established fabrication processes in semiconductor industry. The
results of measurements on fabricated samples are presented and the performance of the components is compared
to that of metallic gratings. It is found that the latter can basically provide similar filter properties, however the
feasible transmission efficiency is significantly lower than for the dielectric gratings. The presented configurations
are applicable in the field of sensors and detectors.
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