Today, international technology group SCHOTT, worldwide leader in the manufacturing of optical materials and components for augmented reality (AR) waveguides, announced that it has joined forces with Israeli company Lumus, the pioneering innovator of reflective waveguide displays. Under the agreement, LOEs offered by Lumus, including the brand-new and pioneering , are now manufactured by SCHOTT.
The partnership adds a new product line to SCHOTT’s offerings to the AR industry. SCHOTT’s groundbreaking RealView® high refractive index glass wafers are already a key enabler for AR devices using refractive waveguide technology with ever-wider field-of-view (FOV). Under the new partnership, SCHOTT broadens its technology offer to the market, in manufacturing optical components based on reflective waveguide technology.
An emerging industry – looking for optical excellence
AR/MR devices are on their way to end consumers. The innovation roadmaps of leading tech giants around the globe include AR solutions as the “next big thing” in consumer electronics. End user-adoption of this technology requires uncompromised image quality, widest FOV, and a small, sleek device light enough to be worn on the face comfortably for extended periods. The AR/MR industry has devoted significant resources to achieve these goals, while meeting the retail price demands of consumers.
The AR/MR industry widely believes that a waveguide-based optical design will be a key enabler for end consumer adoption. In order to deliver images with uncompromised quality, those waveguides require optical glass of most pristine quality and surfaces manufactured to unprecedented precision. SCHOTT is serving AR/MR innovators worldwide as the leading provider of waveguide materials. Within this segment, SCHOTT’s customers use different technologies to manage the input and output functionality in such waveguides, among which surface gratings and volume holographic structures, all of them already using SCHOTT RealView® wafers defining the industry reference in quality and mass manufacturing maturity. Another waveguide technology, widely acknowledged in the market for its image quality, is the reflective waveguide approach pioneered by Lumus.
When making their choice, product designers have to make their technology selection between different trade-offs in image quality, power efficiency, FOV and manufacturing readiness.
Lumus and SCHOTT team up to reshape the future
Within this cooperation, Lumus is responsible for research and development on the optical design of the reflective waveguides, as well as their commercialization. SCHOTT’s focus is the manufacturing of the LOEs, leveraging its international production network with high-end optical glass melting in Germany; its field-proven substrate processing lines in China, operated as a joint venture with Crystal-Optech, being already the hub for SCHOTT RealView®, and its component factory in Malaysia, where the LOE assembly line is located. Dedicated engineering hubs in Germany, Switzerland, and China support required process innovation and metrology development.
An optical glassmaking heritage of more than 135 years keeps driving innovation
SCHOTT, the inventor of specialty glass, is fully committed to enabling the future of augmented and mixed reality with outstanding optical glass components. The company’s scientists and #glasslovers around the world keep on fueling the AR innovation pipeline, based on a proven and scalable mass-production-ready ecosystem.
Back to News
