Breaking the field-of-view limit in augmented reality with a scanning waveguide display

The ultimate augmented reality (AR) should be a glass-type see-through display with uncompromised optical performances. The major technical challenge of present AR display systems is to fulfill wide field-of-view (FOV) and large eye box simultaneously for a comfortable visual experience. Here, we propose a novel scanning waveguide display to break the theoretical limit of present waveguide displays while maintaining a large eye box. The core component is an off-axis reflective lens array, which is fabricated by an innovative chiral liquid crystal polarization holography method. The lens array consists of 8 × 15 lenslets whose pitch length is 2 mm and f -number is 0.41 at 639 nm. Such a scanning waveguide display dramatically extends the diagonal FOV from the state-of-the-art 52° (HoloLens 2) to 100°. These approaches not only significantly advance the optical design of present AR display systems but also open new applications to a broad range of optical systems, including high-precision imaging, sensing, and advanced photonic devices.