Developing a Platform for Creating Waveguide Combiners for AR Headsets and Metasurface-based Optics

Abstract

Augmented and Virtual Reality will enable new platforms for communicating, learning, and computing. These new display platforms rely on essential waveguide combiners for transporting, expanding, and rendering the image generated by the light engine onto the glasses. Using its more than 50 years of semiconductor experience, Applied Materials is now developing waveguide combiners on glass. Metasurface-based optics will revolutionize the world of optics, creating opportunities for new, nanostructured optical devices with a much thinner form factor not previously possible with classical optics. This paper describes the new materials and the techniques needed to create these nanostructured optical devices.