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Manufacturable transparent
holographic components for HUD
applications

Juan Russo, Seth Coe-Sullivan, Martin Sanchez, Joy

Padiyar, Fedor Dimov

Juan M. Russo, Seth Coe-Sullivan, Martin Sanchez, Joy Padiyar, Fedor

Dimov, "Manufacturable transparent holographic components for HUD
applications," Proc. SPIE 10944, Practical Holography XXXIII: Displays,
Materials, and Applications, 109440F (1 March 2019); doi:
10.1117/12.2510571

Event: SPIE OPTO, 2019, San Francisco, California, United States

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 Manufacturable transparent holographic components for HUD
applications
Juan M. Russo*a, Seth Coe-Sullivan a, Martin Sanchez a, Joy Padiyar, Fedor Dimov a
a
Luminit LLC, 1850 W 205th St, Torrance, CA 90501 United States of America

ABSTRACT

Augmented reality (AR) and heads up display (HUD) applications overlap images directly on the user’s field of view.
To achieve that, optical components with high optical performance and versatility are required. Also, the optical
elements must allow an unrestricted view of the world. Traditional optical elements as limited by laws of refraction and
reflection, are not versatile, and reduce the transmittance of the devices worn by the AR user. In this paper, we discuss
the transparent holographic components’ operation parameters and general optical geometries relevant for HUDs, the
holographic substrata available for these applications, their performance characteristics and manufacturability.
Keywords: holography, transparent holographic component, augmented reality, wearables

1. INTRODUCTION
Compared to holographic optical elements (HOEs), conventional optics present several disadvantages for near-to-eye
commercial electronic products for augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), smart glass, and head up displays
(HUD) applications. Refractive optical materials are heavy, while reflective optical trains result in bulky and
nonergonomic designs. Since traditional optical elements are limited to the laws of refraction and reflection,
cumbersome custom optical elements that are difficult to fabricate are required to form a usable image in the user’s
visual field. These limitations result in a device that fails to be ergonomic, volume-efficient, and lightweight and,
hence, is unacceptable. HOEs are thin and can be custom fabricated for ergonomic input and output angles with relative
ease. The flexibility provided by HOE fabrication allows production of an optical system that is compact, useful, and
easy to integrate in consumer electronics, automotive and avionics.
In this application space, narrow angular and spectral performance is often referred to as transparency. In other words,
the user must have an unobstructed view of the environment (AR, HUD) or of another display (VR) while the optical
system overlays specific images and information. Volume HOEs operating in the thick regime are especially suited to
provide the required transparency while overlaying the images with high efficiency. Although surface relief diffractive
optical elements are easy to manufacture by embossed replication, they add scattering and multiple diffraction orders,
causing ghosting, reducing efficiency, and compromising see-through operation. Conversely, thick volumetric HOEs
can be designed to diffract in only one order with minimal scattering, eliminating ghosting, and maximizing efficiency
and see-through transparent performance. Like surface relief structures, volume HOEs can be manufactured in a master
and replication schemes.
These applications provide and easy way for diffractive optical element penetration into the markets with high part
volume and reliability requirements. Based on recent market research reports, combined revenues of up to $120B by
2020 have been forecast. The projected revenue is divided into 70% for AR, 18% for VR, and 5% for HUDs. Volume
HOEs are particularly crucial for the AR and HUD segments, where transparency is necessary in terms of performance
and cosmetic appearance.
Luminit has recently emplaced manufacturing capacity to serve this market. Three-color, tunable, holographic grade
lasers for R&D, mastering and roll-to-roll mass-replication have been included, with the throughput and capacity to well
serve the AR, smart glass, and HUD markets.

Practical Holography XXXIII: Displays, Materials, and Applications, edited by Hans I. Bjelkhagen,
V. Michael Bove, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 10944, 109440F · © 2019 SPIE
CCC code: 0277-786X/19/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2510571

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 10944 109440F-1

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 2. HOLOGRAPHIC RECORDING AND PLAYBACK

Figure 1. Interferometric holographic recording setup (from2).

A hologram is recorded by exposing photosensitive media to an interference pattern as shown in Figure 1. The
recording results in a spatial modulation of the absorption coefficient or the refractive index of the host material1. The
modulation is induced by interfering two wavefronts that give rise to an interference pattern with a period and slant
angle. Since absorption gratings have low theoretical efficiencies, only the latter case will be considered in this paper.
In this sense, the grating can be thought of as a dielectric with a periodic structure that interacts with an incident
electromagnetic wave E(z) as it travels through, as shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2. Thick holographic grating parameters.

The grating vector K is defined by the grating period Λ and the direction perpendicular to the grating fringes as:

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 . (1)
The propagation vector of a wave incident on a thick hologram can be expressed as:

, (2)
where β = 2πn/λ is the average propagation constant.

The diffracted wave is dependent on the grating characteristics and the incident wave. For on-Bragg incidence, the
diffracted wave propagation vector can be obtained using a subset of the more general Floquet or K-vector closure
condition:

. (3)
At Luminit, we have prototyped heads-up displays (HUD) and head- (and helmet-) mounted displays (HMDs) using a
pair of holographic optical elements. Example automotive HUD prototype developed with this technology are shown in
Figure 3.

Figure 3. An 200mm by 300mm RGB holographic combiner fabricated by Luminit. The combiner overlays the image from
the display over the scene.
One of our more successful configurations involves using one hologram to diffract the light into a collimated beam that
is trapped in a thick substrate by total internal reflection (TIR). A second hologram is used to diffract the light out into
the user’s view, without obscuring the scene. We call this configuration substrate-guided holograms (SGH), shown in
Figure 5 below. The FOV achieved with the current Luminit SGH reflection hologram-based HMD is ~28º 4. Figure 4
shows the geometrical beam propagation for that single wavelength prototype. The Zemax ray-tracing simulation with
which we designed that prototype is shown on the right.

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 Figure 4. Geometrical beam propagation in HMD setup4.
In this optical setup hologram H1 is a holographic lens and hologram H2 is a holographic grating out-coupler, and
propagated with the same TIR (total internal reflection) angle a, due to:
Collimating property of the display. the image source is positioned in the H1 front focal plane, the maximal eye box is
formed in the back focal plane, allowing a relaxed eye to see a magnified virtual image at infinity.
H2 cancels the aberrations created by H1, minimizing aberrations.
The first hologram H1 with focal length F provides all the optical power in this setup. Hence, the FOV can be calculated
as:

FOV=2tan-1(l/2F) , (4)
where l is the size of the image source, or microdisplay.
Eye relief is the distance between the glass substrate where hologram H2 is positioned and the eye. The eye relief
distance (ER) plus the distance traveled by the beam in the glass substrate L is equal to the focal length F. If the visor is
thin (~3-5 mm), the distance between holograms (30-50 mm) is much larger than the substrate thickness, and the TIR
angle is close to 90º (~70º or larger), we can calculate
L/1.5 +ER = F, (5)
where L is divided by 1.5 to compensate for the index of refraction of the substrate material, n~1.5.
To allow for a user wearing corrective glass lenses, ER must be ~40 mm. At a realistic substrate thickness of 4 mm and a
TIR angle of 80º, the maximal hologram diameter D (the larger the hologram size, the less the probability of vignetting)
is ~45 mm (Eq. (6)).
D = 2(4 mm /cot 80º) = 45 mm. (6)
Figure 5 shows an equivalent nonguided optical scheme for the SGH-based HMD.

Figure 5. Equivalent optical scheme for the SGH-based HMD.

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 3. TRANSPARENT HOLOGRAPHIC COMPONENT MANUFACTURING
To fabricate a hologram, an interference pattern must be created inside the volume of a photosensitive substrate. The
pattern can be formed by interfering wavefronts from two optical systems that are coherent with each other. In this
process, the path length differences must be within the coherence of the light source, which is usually achieved by
splitting the light from a single longitudinal mode laser with conventional optics into two separate arms. This process is
referred to as mastering. Given that light is split at an optical element that is mechanically separate and far away from
the photosensitive substrate, this kind of recording is extremely vibration sensitive. An alternate manufacturing
technique is replication. In this technique, a high-quality master is recorded using a mastering setup. Copies or replicas
are fabricated by playing back the master with photosensitive substrate in close contact. Since the master and substrate
are in close proximity (usually in contact), replication requires less coherence length from the source and is less vibration
sensitive than mastering. All these modes of fabrication and geometries are shown in Figure 6.

Transmission Reflection
Wavefronts from Wavefronts from
optical system optical system
Mastering

Wavefronts from
optical system
Replication

Replica

Master Master
Replica
Wavefronts
from Master
Figure 6. Mastering (top) and replication (bottom) shown for transmission (left) and reflection (right) hologram
manufacturing. The interference pattern is provided by the overlap of two wavefronts in both cases.

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 Figure 7. Luminit holographic manufacturing machine with hologram plane highlighted.

To emplace a manufacturing capability for transparent holographic components (THC), we have developed a
manufacturing platform that allows for all modes of fabrication: mastering and replication in either transmission or
reflection. A photo of the machine is shown in Figure 7. Luminit currently operates four independent RGB mastering
set-ups and has installed capacity to make 1 million AR-sized replica holograms per year. Reflection-type replication
optical train installed in THC manufacturing machine is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Reflection-type replication optical train installed in THC manufacturing machine.

As mentioned before, HOEs have limited angular and spectral bandwidth. In order to increase the bandwidth or to
include other colors (the case of RGB applications), multiple HOEs can be multiplexed into a single layer to enhance the

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 capabilities of the transparent holographic component (THC). One example is the full color HOEs that require at least
three holograms, one per color. Other applications require more HOEs than the maximum dynamic range for
multiplexing into a holographic substrate. To circumvent this problem, multiple layers can be stacked to increase the
number of HOEs in the same device. For this purpose, the THC manufacturing platform is designed to be able to
laminate multiple holographic layers.

4. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we have summarized the relevant parameters of coupled wave theory that explain the diffraction
phenomena that enables transparent holographic components to be used as an enabler of HUDs and near-to-eye displays
in AR and VR applications. The geometrical optical paths and key parameters of dual-hologram-based near-to-eye
displays were explained. Also, an overview of manufacturing modes (mastering and replication) and geometries
(reflection and transmission) was presented, along with a description of Luminit’s THC manufacturing platform.

REFERENCES

[1] Kogelnik, H., “Coupled wave theory for thick hologram gratings,” Bell Syst. Tech. J. 48(9), 2009–2947 (1969).
[2] Russo, J. M., “Holographic Grating-over-Lens Dispersive Spectrum Splitting for Photovoltaic Applications,” The
University of Arizona. (2015).
[3] Moharam, M. G.., Gaylord, T. K., “Rigorous coupled-wave analysis of planar-grating diffraction,” J. Opt. Soc. Am.
71(7), 811 (1981).
[4] Fedor Dimov., “Viewbox Enhanced Wave-Guided Helmet Mounted Display Visor Optics, SBIR Report to Army,
Contract W15P7T-05-C-L603,” Torrance, CA (2008).
[5] Mukawa, H.., Akutsu, K., “Optical device and virtual image display device” (2008).
[6] Voloschenko, D., Dimov, F., Yu, K.., Arik, E., “Substrate-guided holographic diffuser” (2012).

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