A More Compact Solution for Augmented and Virtual Reality Eyewear

“Image” is everything in the $20 billion market for AR/VR glasses. Consumers are looking for glasses that are compact and easy to wear, delivering high-quality imagery with socially acceptable optics that don’t look like “bug eyes.” University of Rochester researchers at the Institute of Optics have come up with a novel technology to deliver those attributes with maximum effect. In a paper in Science Advances, they describe imprinting freeform optics with a nanophotonic optical element called “a metasurface.” The metasurface is a veritable forest of tiny, silver, nanoscale structures on a thin metallic film that conforms to the freeform shape of the optics—realizing a new optical component the researchers call a metaform. The novel device is able to defy the conventional laws of reflection, gathering the visible light rays entering an AR/VR eyepiece from all directions, and redirecting them directly into the human eye. Nick Vamivakas, a professor of quantum optics and quantum physics, likened the nanosca