Augmented Reality

Blazed Diffraction Grating Waveguide Masters

Inprentus Offers a Clear Manufacturing Advantage for Blazed Diffraction Grating Augmented Reality Waveguides

Performance Benefits for AR Headset Makers

Our waveguide masters translate directly into better end-products: a larger field-of-view, a larger eyebox for reduced visual fatigue and one-size IPD calibration, lighter and more compact form factors, and higher light efficiency for brighter images and longer battery life.

Founded in 2012 by University of Illinois Professor Peter Abbamonte, Inprentus serves research, semiconductor, AR, defense, and sensing markets worldwide. We are the world-leading expert in mechanical ruling—a low-barrier, nano-scale lithography technique for high-efficiency blazed diffraction gratings and waveguide masters. It's the simplest, most direct way to put multiple input, expansion, and output gratings on a single substrate, with performance that matches or beats the more cumbersome slanted-face patterns in use today.

Inprentus Advantages

  • Excellent long-range coherence: Extremely flat wavefronts, no screen door effect
  • Fully domestic supply chain: End-to-end US-Based capability to design, master, replicate, and measure your waveguide components
  • 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
  • Proven Technology: We have designed, built, and tested working prototypes. Our optical simulations match real-world measurements, demonstrating both the underlying physics and a path to manufacture at scale. 
inprentus precision optics
inprentus precision optics

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.