The path towards mass manufacturing of optical waveguide combiners via large-area nanoimprinting

Jotz, Matthias; Bachhuber, Frederik; Steiner, Stefan H.; Bilenberg, Brian; Bro, Tobias Hedegaard; Meulen, Jan Matthijs ter; Ercan, Erhan; Simonen, Janne; Devecí, Murat

doi:10.1117/12.2614310

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Morphotonics' machines can precisely nanoimprint areas of up to 1100 mm x 1300 mm (Gen5), this means that multiple replicas can be made in one cycle. As shown in our previous works, more than 270 waveguides can be imprinted in one machine cycle [1,2], showing that scalability is possible. To ensure dimensional stability, for all imprints High Dimensionally Stable (HDS) stamps from Morphotonics were used.…”

Section: Large-area Nanoimprinting (Morphotonics)mentioning

confidence: 80%

Exploring the boundaries of large-area nanoimprinting for mass production of AR waveguides

Steiner,

Bachhuber,

Bilenberg

et al. 2024

Optical Architectures for Displays and Sensing in Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality (AR, VR, MR) V

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Amidst the mixed news surrounding the feasibility of Augmented Reality (AR) smart glasses, the demand for commercially viable mass production of industry-standard optical waveguide combiners remains unwavering. Over the past two years, our consortium of companies has proposed a cost-effective and scalable manufacturing process for Surface Relief Grating (SRG) based waveguides, offering a comprehensive path from concept to fabrication through large-area nanoimprinting. This approach has garnered significant interest from both customers and partners associated with the participating companies. Our aim is to push beyond the established limits of large-area nanoimprinting. In this work we address the obstacles and latest advancements in maintaining imprint quality, fidelity and uniformity during large-area nanoimprinting. We demonstrate various building blocks that are crucial to manufacture high quality and cost-effective AR waveguides, such as the replication of slanted gratings and the possibility of low residual layer thickness using largearea nanoimprint lithography. We employ high refractive index materials, such as resin and glass (1.8, 1.9 and 2.0), and also explore a lighter and flatter version of the RealView 1.9 glass. Our primary objective is to demonstrate that large-area nanoimprinting not only presents itself as a novel method for high-volume manufacturing of SRG waveguides but also enables the production of challenging optics for AR smart glasses.

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Section: Large-area Nanoimprinting (Morphotonics)mentioning

confidence: 80%

Exploring the boundaries of large-area nanoimprinting for mass production of AR waveguides

Steiner,

Bachhuber,

Bilenberg

et al. 2024

Optical Architectures for Displays and Sensing in Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality (AR, VR, MR) V

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“…To overcome this, Morphotonics makes use of its proprietary master upscaling method. Here, we show an example of this upscaling using a waveguide master designed by LightTrans International and produced by NIL Technology (more details can be found in reference [2][3][4]). This waveguide contains a blazed grating incoupler and binary gratings for the pupil expander and outcoupler.…”

Section: Scalabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical considerations for large-area nanoimprinted augmented reality waveguides

Ballottin,

Jansen,

Scheidegger

et al. 2024

Advances in Patterning Materials and Processes XLI

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Roll-to-Plate (R2P) large-area Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) is a leading technology to replicate complex textures onto various substrate materials. It combines the accuracy of UV imprinting with large-area display manufacturing methods. This is a significantly cost-effective manner to perform micro and nano surface patterning for a plurality of display optics applications, including emerging technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR) waveguides. Even though NIL technology is advancing to comply with the strict quality requirements of waveguide manufacturing, many challenges still remain. Hereby, we address different aspects that need to be considered to make R2P-NIL a viable mass manufacturing method for AR optics, focusing on scalability and quality. We discuss the potential for scalable waveguide manufacturing, through waveguide upscaling for large-area NIL (Gen5 size, 1100 mm x 1300 mm), in combination with the usage of square high refractive index glass substrates (in contrast to the usual round wafers). By making optimal use of this combination, we demonstrate that 480 waveguides can be manufactured in one imprint cycle. Additionally, of equal importance to scalability, high waveguide quality is achieved through the use of high refractive index materials, maintaining of imprint fidelity, and control of the residual layer thickness and its variation. We show that, using the R2P-NIL technology of Morphotonics to replicate AR waveguides, imprint fidelity of binary, blazed and slanted gratings are retained over repeating imprint cycles.

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“…In this paper, based on the proceedings of SPIE 2022 and 2023, 1 , 2 we focus primarily on quality. We aim to demonstrate the replication fidelity and image quality data across the large Gen5-size format (1100 mm×1300 mm), as well as reproducibility over time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enabling mass manufacturing of industry-standard optical waveguide combiners

Steiner,

Jotz,

Bachhuber

et al. 2023

J. Optical Microsystems

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.Nanoimprinting of surface-relief grating-based waveguides has the potential to produce one of the industry-leading augmented reality (AR) smart glasses, but there are still many challenges in the design, scaling, and reproducibility of these imprinted waveguides. A promising path toward mass manufacturing of optical waveguide combiners is via large-area nanoimprinting. Here, we present the complete value chain with partners involved throughout the process: from design, mastering, and materials to imprinting and metrology, to prove that this method improves not only the manufacturing throughput but also the waveguide quality. We demonstrate that the replication and image quality are true to the intended design using large area, high refractive index (n = 1.9), square (300 mm × 300 mm) glass substrates with high-refractive index resins (n = 1.9). This is shown to be valid for over 100 replications and for large area nanoimprinting (Gen5, 1100 mm × 1300 mm). Our goal is to demonstrate a viable path toward high-volume and low-cost manufacturing of AR waveguides based on surface relief gratings.

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The path towards mass manufacturing of optical waveguide combiners via large-area nanoimprinting

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Exploring the boundaries of large-area nanoimprinting for mass production of AR waveguides

Exploring the boundaries of large-area nanoimprinting for mass production of AR waveguides

Practical considerations for large-area nanoimprinted augmented reality waveguides

Enabling mass manufacturing of industry-standard optical waveguide combiners

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