Metasurface Display for Augmented and Virtual Reality

Researchers at Stanford have developed a near-eye display enabling both Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) modes with dynamically controlled contrast. This is enabled by a metasurface featuring a unique non-repeating 2-D pattern that supports high efficiencies and a wide field-of-view. Conventional near-eye displays require a large form-factor and typically suffer from low optical efficiency, limited field-of-view, and maintaining high contrast in bright environments such as outdoors. The Brongersma Lab's innovation can overcome these challenges by introducing a metasurface (enabling a small form-factor low-cost near-eye display with near-unity diffraction efficiency and a large field-of-view) combined with polarization control to provide dynamically controlled dimming of environmental light sources. Furthermore, the ability to convert between AR and VR modes is unique and provides flexibility to meet the users' need to have both an immersive virtual experience and access to see the world around them.

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