Enabling mass manufacturing of industry-standard optical waveguide combiners

Abstract

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.