Augmented Reality
Blazed Diffraction Grating Waveguide Masters
Inprentus Offers a Clear Manufacturing Advantage for Blazed Diffraction Grating Augmented Reality Waveguides
Inprentus is the world-leading expert in a unique nano-scale lithography manufacturing technique known as mechanical ruling, a low barrier technique for creating high-efficiency, blazed diffraction gratings and blazed waveguide masters. Inprentus’ mechanical ruling methods provide the simplest and most direct way to create multiple input, expansion, and output gratings on a single substrate. Our unique manufacturing methods provide performance comparable or better than the more cumbersome slanted face patterns currently in use.
Inprentus Advantages
- Excellent long-range coherence: Extremely flat wavefronts, no screen door effect
- Cut process complexity: Identical process for IC, EPE, and OC gratings
- Customization of groove shapes: Alternating groove properties and non-traditional shapes possible
- Design to fabrication versatility: A large variety of design solutions can be implemented
- Large gratings: Cost does not scale with larger “write” field
- High spectral tunability: Wide angular and spectral bandwidth
- High optical efficiency: Precision facets with wide range of blaze angles
- Efficiency modulation design kit: Pupil expansion strategies available
- Ease of volume replication: Proven process pathway to volume replication
Advanced Specifications
- Versatile:4'“, 6”, 8” wafers or photomasks
- Grating size: No restriction
- Pitch Uniformity: < 20 pm
- Stray light: < 0.5%
- Facet Angles: > 0.1 - 85 degrees
- Line density: 50-6000 lines per mm
How Augmented Reality Waveguides Work
A waveguide consists of 3 gratings - input, turn, and output - on a transparent lens that projects an image into the eye, allowing them to be overlaid onto the real-world vision of the user. These waveguide gratings are transferred onto a transparent lens from the "master mold" using a process called imprinting.