Search

Since its discovery almost 70 years ago, the hologram has been considered to reproduce the most realistic three dimensional images without visual side effects. Holographic video has been extensively researched for commercialization, since Benton et al. at MIT Media Lab developed the first holographic video systems in 1990. However, commercially available holographic video displays have not been introduced yet for several reasons: narrow viewing angle, bulky optics and heavy computing power. Here we present an interactive slim-panel holographic video display using a steering-backlight unit and a holographic video processor to solve the above issues. The steering-backlight unit enables to expand the viewing angle by 30 times and its diffractive waveguide architecture makes a slim display form-factor. The holographic video processor computes high quality holograms in real-time on a single-chip. We suggest that the slim-panel holographic display can provide realistic three-dimensional video in office and household environments., Holographic displays that are both compact and produce realistic holograms without eyestrain are still difficult to realize. Here the authors implement a steering-backlight unit and a holographic video processor to produce a realistic holographic display in a slim panel.

Compact varifocal lenses are essential to various imaging and vision technologies. However, existing varifocal elements typically rely on mechanically-actuated systems with limited tuning speeds and scalability. Here, an ultrathin electrically controlled varifocal lens based on a liquid crystal (LC) encapsulated semiconductor metasurface is demonstrated. Enabled by the field-dependent LC anisotropy, applying a voltage bias across the LC cell modifies the local phase response of the silicon meta-atoms, in turn modifying the focal length of the metalens. In a numerical implementation, a voltage-actuated metalens with continuous zoom and up to 20% total focal shift is demonstrated. The concept of LC-based metalens is experimentally verified through the design and fabrication of a bifocal metalens that facilitates high-contrast switching between two discrete focal lengths upon application of a 3.2 V$_{\rm pp}$ voltage bias. Owing to their ultrathin thickness and adaptable design, LC-driven semiconductor metasurfaces open new opportunities for compact varifocal lensing in a diversity of modern imaging applications.

An ultrathin electrically controlled varifocal lens based on a liquid crystal encapsulated semiconductor metasurface is demonstrated. Owing to their ultrathin thickness and adaptable design, LC-driven semiconductor metasurfaces offer new prospects for modern imaging technologies.

I will introduce the details of our slim-panel holographic video display, and discuss the issues and directions to improve it towards holographic flat panel displays. © 2021 The Authors

Holography has been considered as the ultimate technology for three-dimensional visual experience. Compared to the well-established static holographic technology, holographic video display is still in the research and development stage, before commercial products. This paper reviews various kinds of researches and related systems from the beginning of holographic video display to recent improvements, compares each specification, and describes their features. We discuss the key requirements for holographic display to be commercialized and widely used in everyday life.

We will discuss optical architectures for holographic flat panel displays and present some of our approaches to implement the slim holographic display.

The coherent backlight unit (C-BLU) using a diffractive optical element (DOE) for full-color flat-panel holographic display is proposed. The coherent backlight unit is composed of two diffractive optical elements (DOEs) that are imprinted on the same glass substrate. The illumination area of the backlight is 250 mm x 130 mm and the thickness is 2.2 mm, which is slim compared to other conventional coherent backlight units for holographic display systems. In experiments, the total efficiency is measured as 0.8% at red (638 nm), 3.9% at green (520nm), and 3.4% of blue (473 nm). As a result, we could get the 10 inch full color holographic display with 4k resolution.

A slim beam deflector that satisfies both a large steering angle and a large area can be very useful in various applications. However, a smaller electrode pitch for a large steering angle and enlargement of its area are trade-off relations due to the limited number of control channels in an electrically tunable beam deflector system. For a large steering angle in the active area where actual diffraction occurs, an indium tin oxide electrode of 2 µm pitch was implemented through a stepper lithography. The via-hole process was developed to expand the reduced active area due to the small electrode pitch. We developed a beam deflector with 7200 controllable channels in an active area of 14.4 m m × 14.4 m m . The maximum steering angle is 7.643° at a wavelength of 532 nm.

We report the glasses-type device for augmented reality. By utilizing holographicdisplay method and designing compact optical system, we removed usual discomfort in existing AR apparatus, and developed the approach to the ideal display.

A hybrid liquid crystal and carbon nanotube-based device which shows the capacity to perform as a switchable diffraction grating is demonstrated. A liquid crystal layer was sandwiched between two electrodes (patterned into gratings). The bottom electrode consists of a two dimensional square array of carbon nanotubes, while the top electrode comprises an ITO-based in-plane switching electrode on glass. The carbon nanotubes, due to their high aspect ratios, produce defects within the liquid crystal layer, producing a two dimensional grating. The device displays distinct voltage-dependent diffraction patterns due to the two different electrodes. The diffraction patterns are studied both computationally and experimentally, with good agreement between the results obtained. Both the diffraction pattern and efficiency from the device could be switched by varying the applied voltage across the liquid crystal layer. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Highly efficient transmission-type beam deflectors that have high angular resolution have been widely used for various applications. Continuously tunable beam deflectors have also been needed for many purposes. An indium-tin-oxide (ITO), widely used for transparent electrodes, was placed on the upper and lower glass substrate. The ITO layer on the lower substrate was patterned by the contact mask aligner for relatively wide input and output pad compared to main grating ITO patterns in the active area. These input and output pads on the lower substrate are connected to each driving integrated circuit (IC), which has 360 channels for continuous control. A small pixel pitch of grating patterns of 6 μm (the electrode width is 3 μm with a 3 μm spacing) was developed, and the maximum diffraction angle is calculated and measured at 2.541° with a wavelength of 532 nm. A minimal cell gap of 2.5 μm was applied for the full 2π phase modulation by using a high-birefringence liquid crystal. A driving module for continuous beam steering is also developed and applied to the beam deflector system. A diffraction efficiency of about 50.9% is observed at an angle of diffraction about 2.541°.

The coherent backlight unit (BLU) using a holographic optical element (HOE) for full-color flat-panel holographic display is proposed. The HOE BLU consists of two reflection type HOEs that change the optical beam path and shape by diffraction. The illumination area of backlight is 150 mm x 90 mm and the thickness is 10 mm, which is slim compared to other conventional coherent backlight units for holographic display systems. This backlight unit exhibits a total efficiency of 8.0% at red (660 nm), 7.7% at green (532 nm), and 3.2% at blue (460 nm) using optimized recording conditions for each wavelength. As a result, we could get a bright full color hologram image.

Bufferless networks-on-chip (NoC) has been proposed to reduce network cost by removing router input buffers and improve energy-efficiency. However, bufferless NoC has some limitations that include lower network throughput caused by deflection routing at high load. In addition, the longer router critical path impacts the router frequency, which reduces the amount of bandwidth provided by the network router. These limitations reduce any benefit of bufferless NoC - especially for high-throughput workloads such as GPGPU. In this work, we first provide a simple analysis into how the benefit of bufferless NoC can be reduced for high throughput workloads, especially in terms of energy-efficiency. We then propose clumsy flow control (CFC) - a congestion control mechanism that can reduce the amount of deflection and improve the efficiency of bufferless NoC. The clumsy flow control enables the allocation to be simplified and we propose a novel switch allocation (randomized-deterministic allocation) which significantly reduces the router critical path. The combination of these two techniques result in our bufferless NoC to exceed the system performance of buffered network by approximately 7% (up to 22%) while reducing network area by 53% and energy by 52%.

We demonstrate a holographic image reconstructed by a FPD-based complex spatial light modulator (SLM) which is composed of a phase-only SLM and a sheet of beam combiner. A complex SLM which modulates both amplitude and phase independently is necessary for a better image quality with reducing conjugate images. The two-phase encoding method is one of the most practical candidates for the complex SLM. The proposed complex SLM is presented in a phase-only LCD panel which can be manufactured in a conventional LCD process and it was used for generating different phases. The PAL (Parallel-Aligned nematic Liquid crystal) mode is used to modulate the phase without the amplitude change. The film-type beam combiner consists of a prism array and a grating made by a conventional fabrication process. The beam combiner plays a vital role to merge two pixels and to adjust effective complex modulation. In this paper, the holographic image by the proposed complex SLM is verified by the experimental and simulation work in a monochromatic reconstruction. This complex SLM can be scaled up and it is a promising candidate SLM for a large-size holographic 3D display.

This paper presents experimental optimization of number and geometry of nanotube electrodes in a liquid crystal media from wavefront aberrations for realizing nanophotonic devices. The refractive-index gradient profiles from different nanotube geometries--arrays of one, three, four, and five--were studied along with wavefront aberrations using Zernike polynomials. The optimizations help the device to make application in the areas of voltage reconfigurable microlens arrays, high-resolution displays, wavefront sensors, holograms, and phase modulators.

In this study, we present electric field (E-field) modelling and experiment of arrays of vertically grown carbon nanotubes as three dimensional electrode structures, in order to address liquid crystal molecules in a switchable nano-photonic device. The electric field spawned by the nanotube electrodes is used to align the liquid crystal molecules to generate a gradient refractive index profile across the device. It was observed that multiple nanotube groups generated wide and symmetrical electric fields compared to other geometries. We have utilized nano-photonic devices based on the simulation results and compared them with experimentally obtained electro-optic characteristics. These devices have many applications in voltage reconfigurable micro-optical systems.

The modulation efficiency of the double-phase hologram macro-pixel that is designed for complex modulation of light waves is defined and analyzed. The scale-down of the double-phase hologram macro-pixel associated with the construction of complex spatial light modulators is discussed. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America

We propose an optical system for synthesizing double-phase complex computer-generated holograms using a phase-only spatial light modulator and a phase grating filter. Two separated areas of the phase-only spatial light modulator are optically superposed by 4-f configuration with an optimally designed grating filter to synthesize arbitrary complex optical field distributions. The tolerances related to misalignment factors are analyzed, and the optimal synthesis method of double-phase computer-generated holograms is described. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America

A novel transparent liquid-crystal-based microlens array has been fabricated using an array of vertically aligned multi-wall carbon nanofibers (MWCNFs) on a quartz substrate and its optical characteristics investigated. Electron beam lithography was used for the catalyst patterning on a quartz substrate to grow the MWCNF array of electrodes. The structure of the electrode array was determined through simulation to achieve the best optical performance. Both the patterned catalyst and growth parameters were optimized for optimal MWCNF properties. We report an in-depth optical characterization of these reconfigurable hybrid liquid crystal and nanofiber microlens arrays.