Semrock, Inc.

Apple Inc.

Ligang Wang

Turan Erdogan

Joseph T Foss

Zhenbin Ge

Craig W Hodgson

Glenn Clarke

Victor Mizrahi

Sunggu Kang

Xianwei Zhao

Atul Pradhan

Byron R Cocilovo

Wookyung Bae

Prashant Prabhat

Jian Gao

John Z Zhong

Matthew S Rogers

Zhibing Ge

Naoto Matsuyuki

Serhan O Isikman

Hyungryul J Choi

Graham Butler Myhre

Yoshikazu Shinohara

Marta M Giachino

Zhang Jia

Neil MacKinnon

Se Baek Oh

Tingjun Xu

Miodrag Scepanovic

Francesco Aieta

Jeffrey Nathan Gleason

Avery P Yuen

Takeyoshi Saiga

Ryozo Fukuzaki

Stephen C Cool

Jaebum Chung

Andrej Halabica

Linsen Bie

Jay Anzellotti

Timothy M Gustafson

Isamu Konishiike

Brandon Born

Di Hu

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 with a waveguide and a surface relief grating (SRG) on the waveguide. The SRG may direct image light towards an eye box. An optical blocker may at least partially overlap the SRG. The blocker may include a first optical wedge having a curved surface and a second optical wedge separated from the curved surface by an air gap or a low refractive index material. The curved surface may have a freeform shape that configures the first optical wedge to propagate world light incident upon the blocker within a selected range of incident angles away from the SRG via total internal reflection. The blocker may transmit world light at other incident angles to the eye box through the waveguide. This may allow the blocker to block high incident angle world light from reaching the SRG and producing unsightly rainbow artifacts at the eye box.

Optical systems with artifact blocking structures

A device may include a light-folded projector that may include an infrared (IR) light emitter and a light folding element. The light folding element may receive IR light emitted from the IR light emitter and fold the IR light one or more times to guide the IR light passing through the light folding element to exit the device to an environment. The device may also include a detector that may detect and/or recognize an object in the environment using the IR light from the light-folded projector, and a front-facing camera to capture images of the environment in front of the device.

Light-folded projector

Optical coatings for curved or non-planar substrates are disclosed. Optical coatings may include AR (antireflection) coatings or absorbing ('black' optical) coatings. The optical coatings may include a nanostructure layer formed on top of a stack of one or more materials. Both the nanostructure layer and the stack may be deposited on a curved or non-planar substrate using plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) to provide conformal coating of the substrate. The nanostructure layer may include a mixture of aluminum hydroxide and aluminum oxide hydroxide that is formed by placing a PEALD-deposited aluminum oxide layer in heated deionized water for a predetermined time period. The materials in the stack may be alternated to provide tuning of the optical properties in the optical coating.

Conformal optical coatings for non-planar substrates

An electronic device may be provided with one or more light-sensing components such as a camera and a color ambient light sensor. Optical structures such as camera lenses or a light pipe may be used to convey light from a window in an electronic device to a light-sensing component. One or more infrared-light-blocking-and-visible-light transmitting light filters may be interposed between a light-receiving window in an electronic device and a light-sensing component. The light filters may include infrared-light-blocking glass substrates, silver or other infrared-light-blocking thin films, and/or thin-film interference filters formed from stacks of dielectric layers that serve as infrared light-blocking layers.

Electronic devices with infrared blocking filters

An electronic device may have transparent members such as display cover layers and camera windows. A transparent member such as a sapphire member may be provided with an antireflection coating. The antireflection coating may have a stack of dielectric thin-film interference filter layers that form a thin-film interference filter that suppresses visible light reflections. The stack of dielectric thin-film interference filter layers may have thicknesses and materials that provide the thin-film interference filter and coating with low light reflection properties while enhancing scratch resistance. An adhesion layer may be used to help adhere the stack of thin-film interference filter layer to the transparent member. An antismudge coating such as a fluoropolymer coating may be used to reduce smudging. Graded layers and layers with elevated hardness values may be used in the coating.

Electronic devices having scratch-resistant antireflection coatings

An electronic device may have an optical system that includes one or more light-based components. The light-based components may include light-emitting components such as light-emitting diodes or lasers and may include light-detecting components such as photodiodes or digital image sensors. The optical system may include a light diffuser. The light diffuser may diffuse light that is being detected by a light-detecting component or may diffuse light that is being emitted by a light-emitting component. Light diffusers in optical systems may be formed from patterned light diffuser layers on transparent substrates. Layers of sealant, thin glass layers, antireflection coatings, and other layers may be incorporated into the light diffusers. The light diffuser layers may operate at visible wavelengths and infrared wavelengths. An infrared light diffuser layer may be formed from a patterned silicon layer such as a patterned layer of hydrogenated amorphous silicon.

Electronic device with light diffuser

An optical element includes a transparent substrate having a planar front surface, and a multilayer structure, which is formed on the front surface of the substrate and includes multiple thin film layers, including an outer layer that is exposed to ambient air. The multilayer structure defines, at a target wavelength, a series of resonant cavities that create, for a beam of light at the target wavelength that is incident on the optical element at a target angle, a passband for an s-polarization component of the beam and a stopband for a p-polarization component of the beam.

Polarizing beamsplitter that passes s-polarization and reflects p-polarization

An electronic device may be provided with a display. The display may have a display cover layer. The display may have an active area with pixels and an inactive area without pixels. An opaque masking layer such as a layer of black ink may be formed on the underside of the display cover layer in the inactive area. Windows may be formed from openings in the opaque masking layer. Optical components such as infrared-light-based optical components may be aligned with the windows. The windows may include coatings in the openings that block visible light while transmitting infrared light. The window coatings may be formed from polymer layers containing pigments, polymer layers containing dyes that are coated with antireflection layers, thin-film interference filters formed from stacks of thin-film layers, or other coating structures.

Infrared-transparent window coatings for electronic device sensors

The present disclosure relates to thin film optical interference filters. The filters include a substrate and a plurality of alternating material layers deposited on the substrate. When operated at about 45&#xb0; angle of incidence, the filters exhibit at least one of improved polarization splitting, edge steepness, bandpass bandwidth, and blocking, relative to conventional thin film interference filters.

Interference filter for non-zero angle of incidence spectroscopy

A portable electronic device has a device housing, and an electronic camera module in the device housing. The module has a focusing lens to focus light from a scene, an imaging sensor to receive the focused light, and an electro-optic variable aperture to allow different amounts of the light from the scene to reach the imaging sensor. The electro-optic variable aperture may include a first aperture stack placed on a transparent substrate and a second aperture stack placed on the first aperture stack. The first aperture stack defines a first aperture and the second aperture stack defines a second aperture that is larger than the first aperture. Each aperture stack includes a transparent conductive oxide layer that is common with the adjacent aperture stack. Alternatively the electro-optic variable aperture may include an aperture stack that has two transparent conductive oxide layer layers, where one layer is in the form of concentric annuli.

Adjustable solid film camera aperture

An optical image splitter disposed in the path of image-bearing light along an optical axis has a coated dichroic surface disposed at an angle of 15 degrees or less relative to incident light along the optical axis. The coated dichroic surface has a number of layers of material, the of layers including layers having a first refractive index, n, and layers having a second refractive index, n, greater than the first refractive index. The coated surface transmits light of at least a first wavelength range to form a first image at an image plane and reflects light of a second wavelength range to form a second image at the image plane.

Dichroic image splitter

A dichroic beamsplitter has a composite prism that has at least first and second prism elements that are coupled together along facing surfaces, wherein the respective facing surfaces of the first and second prism elements are equidistant from each other. The composite prism has a first flat external surface that lies within a first plane, a second flat external surface that lies within a second plane that is perpendicular to the first plane, a third flat external surface that lies within a third plane that is parallel to the second plane, and a coated surface internal to the composite prism and having a multilayer thin-film dichroic beamsplitter coating, wherein the coated surface lies within a fourth plane that intersects at least one of the first, second, and third planes at an angle that is less than about 25 degrees.

Glass block dichroic beamsplitters

The present disclosure relates to thin film notch filters having the basic structure of an interference filter. In some embodiments, the filters according to the present disclosure exhibit at least one notch correlating to a pass band defect. The filters of the present disclosure may exhibit at least one of improved pass band bandwidth, improved edge steepness, narrower notch band FWHM, and lower sensitivity to material mismatch, relative to prior known thin film notch filters based on the basic structure of an interference filter. The present disclosure also relates to methods of making the filters described herein, and the use of these filters in optimal measurement systems.

Optical thin-film notch filter with very wide pass band regions

Optical filters and methods of making optical filters are provided. The optical filter can include a first and second stack of layers. The first stack of layers can be configured to provide a cut-on edge for s-polarized radiation incident at a second wavelength value and a cut-off edge for s-polarized radiation incident at a third wavelength value. The second stack of layers can be configured to provide a cut-off edge for s-polarized radiation incident on the second stack of layers at a fourth wavelength value. Further, the fourth wavelength value can lie between the second wavelength value and the third wavelength value. Furthermore, a curve or line of full-width half-maximum (FWHM) values of the optical filter pass-band can define a first derivative with respect to angle-of-incidence values at at least one angle-of-incidence value that is substantially positive or substantially zero.

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, NY, United States of America

Ligang Wang