What is Waveguide Lens

Optical waveguide, considered a must-have optical solution for consumer-grade AR glasses due to its thinness and lightness and high penetration characteristics of external light, is also discouraged by its high price and high technical threshold. With the mainstream AR equipment Microsoft HoloLens2, Magic Leap One, etc. on the adoption of optical waveguide technology and equipment mass production, as well as AR optical module manufacturers DigiLens, Nedjia, Rhinoceros Microlight and other recent financing news frequently disclosed, resulting in the heat of the discussion of optical waveguide also continued to increase a lot.

So how does optical waveguide work? What is the difference between the array optical waveguide, geometric optical waveguide, diffractive optical waveguide, holographic optical waveguide, and multilayer optical waveguide that are all over the market? And how does it change the AR glasses market pattern step by step?

One, optical waveguide, an optical solution born in response to the demand for AR glasses

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) is a technology field that has attracted a lot of attention in recent years, and their near-eye display system is a pixel on the display, through a series of optical imaging components to form the virtual image of a distant place and projected to the human eye.

The difference is that AR glasses require perspective (see-through) to see both the real outside world and virtual information, so the imaging system can't get in the way. This requires the addition of an optical combiner (optical combiner), through the form of "layers", the virtual information and the real scene into one, complementing each other, each other "enhancement".

The optical display system of an AR device typically consists of a microdisplay and optical components. To summarize, the display system of AR glasses on the market today is a combination of various micro-displays and optical components such as prisms, free-form surfaces, BirdBath, optical waveguides, etc., of which the difference in optical combiners is a key part of the AR display system.

The miniature display, which is used to provide display content for the device. It can be active devices that are self-illuminated, such as light-emitting diode panels like micro-OLEDs and the now popular micro-LEDs, or liquid crystal displays (including transmissive LCDs and reflective LCOS) that require an external light source to illuminate them, as well as digital micromirror arrays (DMDs, which are at the heart of DLPs) based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology, and laser-beam scanners (LBS).