Retinal Projection Near‐Eye Displays with Huygens’ Metasurfaces
Weitao Song, Xinan Liang, Shiqiang Li, Parikshit Moitra, Xu Jia, Emmanuel Lassalle, Yuanjin Zheng, Yongtian Wang, Ramón Paniagua‐Domínguez, Arseniy I. Kuznetsov
Abstract
Abstract Most of current commercial near‐eye 3D displays use traditional stereoscopic approach to generate the 3D information. A well‐known issue for this type of technology is the vergence and accommodation conflict, which leads to visual confusion and fatigue for the viewer. To address this problem, a proof‐of‐concept solution based on retinal projection technology has been developed to provide accommodation‐free virtual images by using a small aperture (360 µm × 360 µm) transparent Huygens’ metasurface hologram as the display device. The virtual image is generated using a visible laser illuminating a metasurface hologram, which is then directly projected onto the retina using an optical see‐through eyepiece. Using this concept, this work experimentally demonstrates a compact and wearable near‐eye display of light weight (≈50 g, including spectacle frames, light source, and battery) creating accommodation‐free images (clear ranging from 0.5 to 2 m), overlaid with the real world and directly viewed by naked eye. To do so, a new design method is introduced for retinal projection near‐eye displays that, inherently, is able to solve the vergence‐accommodation conflict using a small aperture Huygens’ metasurface hologram.