Diffractive multibeam element-based backlighting
AssigneeLeia Inc.
InventorsFrancesco Aieta, David A. Fattal
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A diffractive multiview backlight and a multiview display employ an array of diffractive multibeam elements including a plurality of diffraction gratings configured to provide a plurality of light beams having different principal angular directions corresponding to different view directions of the multiview display. The display includes multiview pixels that include sub-pixels. A size of the diffractive multibeam element of the array is comparable to a size of a sub-pixel in a multiview pixel of the multiview display.
Claims23
A diffractive multiview backlight comprising:
- a light guide configured to guide light in a propagation direction along a length of the light guide;
- and
- an array of diffractive multibeam elements spaced apart from one another along the light guide length, a diffractive multibeam element of the array comprising a plurality of diffraction gratings configured to couple out from the light guide a portion of the guided light as a plurality of coupled-out light beams having different principal angular directions corresponding to respective view directions of a multiview display comprising multiview pixels,
- wherein a size of the diffractive multibeam element is comparable to a size of a sub-pixel in a multiview pixel of the multiview display.
A multiview display comprising:
- an array of multiview pixels configured to provide a plurality of different views of the multiview display, a multiview pixel comprising a plurality of sub-pixels configured to modulate a corresponding plurality of coupled-out light beams;
- a light guide configured to guide light;
- and
- an array of diffractive multibeam elements, a diffractive multibeam element of the element array comprising a plurality of diffraction gratings configured to diffractively couple out a portion of the guided light as the plurality of coupled-out light beams corresponding to the plurality of sub-pixels, the coupled-out light beams having different principal angular directions corresponding to different view directions of respective different views of the plurality of different views of the multiview display,
- wherein a size of the diffractive multibeam element is comparable to a size of a sub-pixel of the sub-pixel plurality.
A method of multiview backlight operation, the method comprising:
- guiding light in a propagation direction along a length of a light guide;
- and
- diffractively coupling a portion of the guided light out of the light guide using an array of diffractive multibeam elements to provide a plurality of coupled-out light beams having different principal angular directions corresponding to respective different view directions of a multiview display, a diffractive multibeam element of the array comprising a plurality of diffraction gratings,
- wherein a size of the diffractive multibeam element is comparable to a size of a sub-pixel in a multiview pixel of the multiview display.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.