(hereinafter referred to as "RP OptoCrystal") has recently completed a round of financing of tens of millions of RMB. This round of financing was co-invested by Vision Source, Zijian Electronics, and Nongyin International.
Founded in 2012, Richpac is a leading supplier of AugmentedReality (AR) near-eye display modules in the industry. Since its inception, Richpac has been focusing on optical waveguide display technology, and it is one of the few companies in China that owns intellectual property rights of geometrical optical waveguide modules, and its core team has many years of industry accumulation in the field of optics and AR.
As one of the core technologies of meta-universe, AR has become the leading core productivity of science and technology innovation frontier, can build the next generation of mobile computing platform. Among them, AR glasses can present a virtual screen of more than 120 inches at 3-5 meters in front of the eyes on the AR display lens which is as thin as a common lens, perfectly solving the demand of "freeing hands" and HD large screen. The industry expects that in the future, through the AR glasses can replace the cell phone, replace the physical screen, can realize most of the functions of cell phones and other electronic devices, to provide in the near-eye end of the display of any virtual screen of the extraordinary experience, to lead us into a new meta-universe.
Optical display device is the core device of AR and meta-universe, and the optical display system of AR device usually consists of miniature display and optical components. In a nutshell, the display system of AR glasses currently on the market is a combination of various micro-displays and optical components such as prisms, free-form surfaces, BirdBath, optical waveguides, etc., of which the difference of optical combiners is the key part to differentiate the AR display system.
BirdBath ("BB" for short) is mainly used for movie viewing and other purposes due to its excellent image quality. Most of these products adopt split design, which can control the weight of the whole machine at the level of about 80g to ensure portability, but the disadvantage lies in the large size of the optical module, thicker lenses, low transmittance rate, and even more inability to see the real scene.
One of the optical waveguide technology is a more distinctive optical components born in response to the demand for AR glasses, because of its thin and light and the high penetration characteristics of the external light and is considered to be a must-have optical solution for consumer-grade AR glasses, Microsoft Hololens two-generation products as well as MagicLeapOne and other equipment is used in the optical waveguide technology program. Its advantages lie in thin and light, high transmittance, large FOV, etc. Because of the high initial cost, it is more used in B-end products. With the cost reduction, more and more consumer AR glasses have adopted optical waveguide technology, and the highly integrated whole machine has reached a lightweight level of 80g or less. This current solution really helps to create lightweight AR glasses that meet the daily wearing experience.
Optical waveguide is defined as an optical system capable of field-of-view folding and recovery, and lossless transmission through total reflection. The optical waveguide system consists of three parts: coupling in, waveguide, and coupling out. The specific process is that first, a complete picture with a large viewing angle is cut into several pieces and then folded to form a thin strip of the field of view, so that it can be coupled in through a very small optical lens, and the coupling out part then recovers the cut picture as a whole.
What the coupled-in part actually does is to fold the field of view, the coupled-out part realizes the field of view recovery, and the waveguide realizes the lossless transmission of light. In this way, the optical waveguide can realize a large field of view in a thin optical lens.
Optical waveguide in general can be divided into geometric waveguide (GeometricWaveguide) and diffractive waveguide (DiffractiveWaveguide) two kinds of optical waveguide, geometric waveguide is the so-called array optical waveguide, which through the array of mirrors stacked to achieve the output of the image and the expansion of the moving eye frame. The concept of "geometric waveguide" was first proposed by the Israeli company Lumus and has been committed to optimize the iteration, so far almost twenty years.
Optical waveguide lenses can be achieved below 2mm, plus the integrated volume of the optical machine can be very small, in the ID design of AR glasses is the closest to the appearance of ordinary glasses, to achieve the minimization of the blockage of the user's field of view, greatly improving the feasibility of AR glasses all-weather wear, close to the optical perspective (OST) class of the best choice of AR wearable devices.
The geometric optical waveguide utilizes traditional geometric optical design concepts, simulation software, and manufacturing processes without involving any micro- or nanoscale structures. As a result, image quality, including color and contrast, can be achieved at a very high level. Not only help to achieve lightweight, optical waveguide module in the field of view, resolution, brightness, light transmission rate, Eyebox, etc. also has the advantage, of course, objectively speaking, the color display, contrast, etc. compared to BirdBath and other programs there is indeed a gap, of course, this will be optimized with the manufacturing process and the maturity of MicroLEDs and other high-brightness optical machines and gradually improve.
But the geometric light waveguide process is more complicated, one of the steps is "half-transparent and half-reflective" mirror array coating process. As light propagates less and less, each of the five or six mirrors in the array requires a different reflectance-transmittance ratio (R/T) to ensure that the amount of light coming out of the entire range of moving eye frames is uniform.
Early geometric optical waveguide manufacturers in the industry mainly shipped one-dimensional pupil dilation products, the optical machine is too large, it is difficult to match the consumer's mental image of the ultimate form of AR glasses. Two-dimensional pupil dilation optical waveguide not only raises the optical design requirements to a higher level, but also in the production process is more demanding.
Dilated pupil technology replicates the pupil resulting in an increase in the total light output area, naturally, in each position of the pupil to see a reduction in the amount of light flux, which is also caused by waveguide technology, optical efficiency than the traditional optical system is one of the reasons for the low. At the same time, with the process of optimization of the mirror array has been almost "invisible", but in the case of turning off the optical machine can still see a row of vertical stripes on the lens (i.e., mirror array), which may block part of the external line of sight, but also affects the aesthetics of the AR glasses.
For example, traditional one-dimensional pupil-dilating optical waveguides can still be bonded between waveguides using optical glue, and although the yield will be reduced, the optical performance is still within an acceptable range. Upgrade to two-dimensional pupil dilation optical waveguide, if you want to achieve a better display effect and high luminous efficacy, two-dimensional waveguide waveguide involved in the waveguide bonding surface of up to 20-30 layers, if the use of glue in the case of a high number of bonding surfaces, the yield will be a straight line drop and the overall optical effect will be due to the glue will produce a series of chain problems.
Therefore, non-glued bonding waveguide lamination process has become a geometric waveguide manufacturers have to face and need to overcome the technical difficulties. At present, the industry has the ability to use the technology and bonding method of mass production of Israel's Lumus and the domestic Li surging light crystal.
The geometric optical waveguide technology and "2D pupil dilation" technology independently developed by RIPPER has reached the international advanced level, and the 2D geometric optical waveguide products have excellent optical performance, and at the same time, they also have miniaturized and lightweight product forms, which provide the basic support for the deeply immersive, strongly interactive and highly integrated AR smart glasses. Our latest 2D geometric optical waveguide products have achieved a field of view exceeding 50° and a luminous efficacy exceeding 2000nit/lm, and we have already cooperated with domestic and international famous head enterprises to develop consumer-grade AR geometric optical waveguide devices.
In terms of the lamination process, the molecular bonding production process developed independently by LPKF for high-performance optical glass breaks through the defects of the traditional bonding process, realizes large-scale industrialized production, and significantly improves the technical performance, mass production, consistency, and yield rate of the products, and maintains an industry-leading yield rate of more than 85%.
The molecular bonding process of Surge OptoCrystal forms new and stable molecular bonds in the bonding layer at the molecular level, so that the bonding surfaces are tightly and flatly bonded together by molecular force, which strengthens the bonding strength, improves the flatness of the bonding surfaces, and reduces the relative distance, which is conducive to improving the bonding yield and display effect of the products. In addition, the molecular bonding process adopts automated equipment processing, which can complete multiple batches and large quantities at the same time, thus solving the mass production of products and greatly improving the production yield. Based on these advantages, the molecular bonding process has become the technical guarantee and process foundation for "2D pupil expansion" products to solve the technical breakthrough and mass production yield.
LPKF has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to set up a modern production base, built standardized optical glass processing and high-precision integrated assembly production lines, including Class 100, Class 1,000 optical clean room, geometric waveguide lens and its display module production capacity to reach 120,000 sets/year, has realized the full line of production and operation, and the current cumulative shipments ranked the first in the industry segments.
RP OptoCrystal has launched more than ten AR geometric light waveguide display devices, which are used in consumer terminals, intelligent industry, intelligent medical care, intelligent security, culture, tourism and education, etc. The representative products are QIDIONE, RokidGLASS2, Vision G510, First Mirror GX1/MG1/MC1, Vantage Star X20/X21, and Shape 007Pro, etc. The breakthrough of AR geometric light waveguide display devices has greatly promoted the development of the AR geometric light waveguide display devices, and greatly contributed to the development of the industry. The breakthrough of display device has greatly promoted the promotion speed of AR glasses worldwide.
