Gaze‐Matched Pupil Steering Maxwellian‐View Augmented Reality Display with Large Angle Diffractive Liquid Crystal Lenses

• Published in: Advanced photonics research Vol. 3; no. 5
• Main Authors: Zou, Junyu, Li, Lingshan, Wu, Shin-Tson
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.05.2022; Wiley-VCH
• Subjects: Augmented reality; cholesteric liquid crystal lens; Efficiency; gaze matching; Glass substrates; large diffraction angel; Lasers; Light; Maxwellian-view display; pupil steering; Steering systems
• DOI: 10.1002/adpr.202100362
• ISSN: 2699-9293

Maxwellian‐view structure exhibits several advantages in augmented reality (AR) displays, such as high efficiency, always‐in‐focus (no vergence‐accommodation conflict (VAC)), and simple optical structure. However, the bottleneck of Maxwellian‐view is its tiny eyebox. Extensive efforts have been devoted to enlarge the eyebox of the Maxwellian‐view system based on pupil duplication or pupil steering by creating multiple viewing points, however, the important gaze matching is neglected. Once the virtual image center deviates from the user's eye gaze, it will bring an unnatural viewing experience. Herein, a gaze‐matching Maxwellian‐view AR system with an enlarged eyebox is demonstrated. In the meantime, this AR system also maintains the properties of aberration‐free, high efficiency, highly transparent for ambient light, and relatively large field of view. Moreover, two layers of off‐axis cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) lenses are applied as the optical combiner in the system, which is lightweight and compact. The off‐axis angle of such a CLC lens is as large as 60 degrees, which plays a vital role in future Maxwellian‐view AR headsets. A gaze matching pupil steering Maxwellian‐view augmented reality system is demonstrated. A two‐layer off‐axis cholesteric liquid crystal lenses are applied for the optical combiner. These lenses exhibit a large diffraction angle and small F number. Moreover, the properties of the system are aberration‐free, high optical efficiency, good ambient light transmittance, relatively large field of view, compact, and lightweight.