Apple Inc.

Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.P.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP

Francesco Aieta

Se Baek Oh

Anita Rogacs

Charles Santori

Byron R Cocilovo

Graham Butler Myhre

Bradley Charles Steele

Jonathan B Pfeiffer

Viktor Shkolnikov

James William Stasiak

Mineo Yamakawa

Hyungryul J Choi

Kenneth Ward

Scott M DeLapp

Eric J Hansotte

Zhibing Ge

Friso Schlottau

Enkhamgalan Dorjgotov

Ligang Wang

Zhenbin Ge

Young Cheol Yang

Xianwei Zhao

Guolin Peng

Igor Stamenov

Yifei Wang

Yoshitaka Matsui

Nan Zhu

Jin Yan

Paul J Gelsinger-Austin

Jun Xie

Adam C Urness

Jian Gao

Xiaoyong Fu

Wencong Zhu

Brandon Born

Zhujun Shi

Shigeto Kobori

Yukinori Asakawa

Seyedeh Mahsa Kamali

A display may include a waveguide, an input coupler having a first surface relief grating (SRG) in a substrate on the waveguide, a cross-coupler having a second SRG in the substrate, and an output coupler having a third SRG in the substrate. The display may direct light to an eye box. A capping layer may be disposed over the substrate. An anti-reflective coating may be disposed over the capping layer. Microstructures may be disposed in non-SRG regions of the substrate and may be non-diffractive at visible wavelengths. The microstructures may include grooves and may have a similar filling factor to the SRGs. This may cause portions of the capping layer over the microstructures to sink into the grooves, thereby providing the capping layer with a relatively uniform thickness across a lateral area of the waveguide, without the microstructures producing visible artifacts or interacting with the light.

Display devices having grating substrates with sub-wavelength patterns

An electronic device may include a display that generates light for an optical system that redirects the light towards an eye box. The optical system may include a waveguide, a non-diffractive input coupler, a cross coupler, and an output coupler. The cross coupler may expand the light in a first direction. The cross coupler may perform an even number of diffractions on the light and may couple the light back into the waveguide at an angle suitable for total internal reflection. The output coupler may expand the light in a second direction while coupling the light out of the waveguide. The cross coupler may include surface relief gratings or holographic gratings embedded within the waveguide or formed in a separate substrate. The optical system may direct the light towards the eye box without chromatic dispersion and while supporting an expanded field of view and optical bandwidth.

Optical systems with light-expanding couplers

An electronic device may have a display system. The display system may include a waveguide, an input coupler, and a surface relief grating (SRG) structure. There are various ways to form a SRG structure. In one example, nanoimprinting may be performed on a low-index resin to form a mold for a subsequent deposition of high-index material. The high-index material conforms to the mold to form ridges for the SRG structure. A reusable mold may be formed with a plurality of ridges on a flexible substrate and coated by an anti-stick coating. The reusable mold may be coated with a high-index material that is attached to a glass substrate and cured to form a wafer-level SRG structure with high-index ridges on a glass substrate. The wafer-level SRG structure is subsequently diced. SRG structures may also be formed that include varying trough thicknesses, varying ridge thicknesses, and/or a sloped substrate.

Methods of forming holographic gratings for optical systems

A display may include a waveguide. An input coupler may couple image light into the waveguide and an output coupler may couple the image light out of the waveguide. A surface relief grating on the waveguide may couple infrared light into the waveguide and may couple the infrared light out of the waveguide. The surface relief grating may additionally or alternatively couple reflected infrared light into the waveguide and out of the waveguide and towards an infrared sensor. The surface relief grating may also form a cross-coupler for the image light. The infrared sensor may gather infrared sensor data based on the reflected infrared light. Control circuitry may perform gaze tracking operations based on the infrared sensor data. The input and output couplers may also be formed from surface relief gratings or may include other optical components.

Waveguide display with gaze tracking

An electronic device may include a display that produce images. The display may generate light for an optical system that redirects the light towards an eye box. The optical system may include a waveguide that propagates the light in a first direction towards the output coupler. The output coupler may couple the light out of the waveguide towards the eye box while inverting a parity of the light about the first direction. The coupler may include a first element such as a set of partial mirrors or diffractive gratings that redirects a first portion of the light in a second direction. The coupler may include a second element that redirects a second portion of the light in a third direction opposite the second direction. The first element may redirect the second portion and the second element may redirect the first portion towards the eye box.

Optical systems with interleaved light redirectors

An electronic device may have a display that provides image light to a waveguide. First and second liquid crystal lenses may be mounted to opposing surfaces of the waveguide. An coupler may couple the image light out of the waveguide through the first lens. The second lens may convey world light to the first lens. Control circuitry may control the first lens to apply a first optical power to the image light and the world light and may control the second lens to apply a second optical power to the world light that cancels out the first optical power. Each lens may include two layers of liquid crystal molecules having antiparallel pretilt angles. The pretilt angles and rubbing directions of the first lens may be antiparallel to corresponding pretilt angles and rubbing directions of the second lens about the waveguide.

Waveguided display system with adjustable lenses

An electronic device may have a display that emits image light, a waveguide, and an input coupler that couples the image light into the waveguide. Beam splitter structures may be embedded within the waveguide. The beam splitter structures may partially reflect the image light multiple times and may serve to generate replicated beams of light that are coupled out of the waveguide by an output coupler. The beam splitter structures may replicate the beams across two dimensions to provide an eye box with uniform-intensity light from the display across its area. The beam splitter structures may include stacked partially reflective beam splitter layers, sandwiched transparent substrate layers having different indices of refraction, a thick volume hologram interposed between substrate layers, or combinations of these or other structures. The reflectivity of the beam splitter structures may vary discretely or continuously across the lateral area of the waveguide.

Waveguided display systems

In an example, an apparatus is described that includes a light source, a holographic optical element, a sampling apparatus, and a detector. The light source is configured to emit a beam of excitation light. The holographic optical element is arranged to convert the beam of excitation light into a plurality of beams of excitation light. The sampling apparatus is arranged to project the plurality of beams of excitation light onto a surface outside the apparatus as a two-dimensional pattern of projection points. The sampling apparatus is further arranged to collect scattered radiation emitted by the surface in response to the two-dimensional pattern of projection points. The detector detects a frequency shift in the scattered radiation.

Simultaneous detection of multiple spectra of scattered radiation

Optical readers are disclosed in examples herein. An example optical reader including a light source to emit a light beam; and a spot pattern generator to receive the light beam and to generate a two-dimensional spot array from the light beam, the two-dimensional spot array to be directed toward a substrate having nanostructures, the two-dimensional spot array to be sensed to detect a presence or an absence of a substance of interest on the substrate.

Optical readers

An electronic device may have a light source such as a laser light source. The light source may emit light into a waveguide. A phase grating may diffract the light that is emitted into the waveguide to produce diffracted light. The diffracted light may be oriented parallel to a surface normal of an angled edge of the waveguide and parallel to a surface normal of a microelectromechanical systems mirror element in a two-dimensional scanning microelectromechanical systems mirror that is coupled to the edge of the waveguide. A wave plate may be interposed between the mirror and the edge of the waveguide to change the polarization state of light reflected from the mirror element relative to incoming diffracted light from the phase grating. The phase grating may be configured so that the reflected light is not diffracted by the phase grating.

Scanning mirror display devices

In one implementation, a spectral microscope may comprise a substrate with a planar lens, the planar lens including a phase profile including an axial focus and an oblique focus, a light source to excite a signal of a particle among a plurality of particles, and a detector to receive light generated from the light source from the axial focus of the planar lens and a spectral color component of the excited signal of the particle from the oblique focus of the planar lens.

Spectral microscope

Examples disclosed herein include an augmented reality (AR) see-through display system, which includes a diffractive backlight substrate including diffractive gratings. The display system includes a light source to transmit light into the backlight substrate, wherein the diffractive gratings scatter the light out of the backlight substrate to form an array of directional pixels. The display system includes an LCD panel to modulate the array of directional pixels to form an image that augments a real world view visible through the backlight substrate and the LCD panel.

Augmented reality see-through display

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Francesco Aieta