Reflective Microlens Array for Thin 3D Display
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional three-dimensional image display devices with microlens arrays face challenges in reducing the focal length of microlenses, making it difficult to create thinner devices while maintaining optical performance.
Innovation Solution
The optical system incorporates a first optical member with a concave surface that reflects circularly polarized light and a second optical member that transforms light components, allowing for a thinner design by positioning the display surface at the focal point, utilizing a reflective linear polarizer plate, quarter-wave plate, and reflective mirror with a concave surface filled with optical adhesive, enabling efficient light bundling and minimizing chromatic aberration.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a microlens array is used to form three-dimensional images, then optical performance is maintained, but the focal length cannot be reduced making the device thicker
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the conventional refractive microlens approach by using a reflective microlens array. Instead of light passing through a lens to converge at the focal point, light reflects off a microlens array where the display surface is positioned at the focal point, enabling the light to return to the same surface. This inversion allows for a much shorter optical path and reduced device thickness while maintaining effective image formation capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the fundamental optical parameter from refraction to reflection. By using a reflective microlens array with the display surface positioned at the focal point, the optical system achieves a dramatically reduced focal length compared to conventional refractive microlens systems. This parameter change enables the device to be much thinner while preserving the ability to form three-dimensional images through light bundling.
2Length of moving object
If the display surface is positioned at the focal point of the concave mirror, then device thickness is reduced, but light bundling efficiency must be maintained
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the conventional optical path by positioning the display surface at the focal point of the reflective microlens array. In traditional systems, the focal point is distant from the lens surface, but here the inverted configuration causes light to converge and return to the same surface, achieving both thinness and effective light bundling for three-dimensional image formation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent utilizes a reflective configuration where light travels in a different dimensional path compared to conventional transmission through lenses. By using reflection and positioning the display surface at the focal point, the optical system achieves compactness in one dimension (thickness) while maintaining the necessary optical functionality through a different spatial arrangement.
3Reliability
If circularly polarized light is used with a concave surface, then chromatic aberration is eliminated, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs a composite optical member that integrates multiple functional layers: a concave reflective surface, a quarter-wave plate, and a linear polarizer. This composite structure eliminates chromatic aberration by using circularly polarized light reflection from the concave surface, while the integrated design of these combined components aims to manage the overall device complexity through functional integration.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces conventional refractive optical elements that suffer from chromatic aberration with a reflective system using circularly polarized light. The concave reflective surface combined with polarization control substitutes for traditional multi-element lens systems, eliminating chromatic aberration while using electromagnetic (optical) properties rather than complex mechanical lens arrangements.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This configuration results in a thinner display device with improved brightness and no chromatic aberration, enabling efficient three-dimensional image display and potentially two-dimensional image observation, while allowing for miniaturization without increasing device thickness.
Implementation Method 1
an optical member having a concave surface that reflects a light having a first circularly polarized light component and transmits a light having a second circularly polarized light component
Implementation Method 2
a wave plate that transforms the light having the first linearly polarized light component into the light having the first circularly polarized light component
Implementation Method 3
a polarizer plate that transmits a light having a first linearly polarized light component and reflects a light having a second linearly polarized light component
Implementation Method 4
positioning the display surface at the focal point
Data Source
AI summary
An optical system includes: a first optical member having a concave surface that reflects a light having a first circularly polarized light component and transmits a light having a second circularly polarized light component a rotation direction of which is opposite to a rotation direction of the first circularly polarized light component; and a second optical member that transforms the light having the first circularly polarized light component reflected from the first optical member into the light having the second circularly polarized light component to be reflected so as to be incident on the first optical member.