What is a wave guide lens?

optical waveguide is considered as a necessary optical scheme for consumer-grade AR glasses because of its thinness and high penetration of external light, but it is prohibitive because of its high price and high technical threshold. With the adoption of optical waveguide technology and mass production of mainstream AR devices, such as Microsoft HoloLens2 and Magic Leap One, and the frequent disclosure of recent financing news of AR optical module manufacturers, such as DigiLens, Nederga and Lingxi LLL, the discussion on optical waveguide has also continued to increase a lot.

so, what is the working principle of optical waveguide? What's the difference between array optical waveguides, geometric optical waveguides, diffractive optical waveguides, holographic optical waveguides and multilayer optical waveguides in the market? How did it change the market structure of AR glasses step by step?

1. Optical Waveguide, an optical scheme born in response to the demand of AR glasses

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are widely concerned in recent years. Their near-eye display systems all form distant virtual images from pixels on the display through a series of optical imaging elements and project them into people's eyes.

the difference is that AR glasses need to see-through, not only to see the real outside world, but also to see virtual information, so the imaging system can't stand in front of the line of sight. It is necessary to add one or a group of optical combiner, and through the form of "cascade", the virtual information and the real scene are integrated, complementary and mutually "enhanced".

the optical display system of p>AR equipment usually consists of a micro display screen and optical elements. Generally speaking, the display system of AR glasses on the market at present is the combination of various micro-display screens and optical elements such as prism, freeform surface, BirdBath and optical waveguide, among which the difference of optical combiner is the key part to distinguish the AR display system.

micro display screen, which is used to provide display content for the device. It can be self-luminous active devices, such as light-emitting diode panels like micro-OLED and now popular micro-LED, liquid crystal display screens (including transmissive LCD and reflective LCOS) that need external light source illumination, digital micromirror array (DMD, the core of DLP) and laser beam scanner (LBS) based on MEMS technology.