New progress in AR optical waveguide: Zhige Technology received 100 million yuan in financing and adopted four-dimensional breakthrough myopia lens technology

Recently, new trends have emerged in the field of AR optical waveguides: AI glasses optical company Zhige Technology has completed a new round of 100 million yuan in financing, and Guangna 4D has released an ultra-thin SiC optical waveguide fully-fitted myopia lens solution. The two major companies have promoted the accelerated development of the AR optical waveguide industry in the direction of mass production, lightweighting, and scene-based use of capital layout and technological breakthroughs respectively.

Zhige Technology completed a new round of 100 million yuan financing

Recently, Zhige Technology announced the completion of a new round of 100 million yuan financing, led by Changjiang Securities Innovation Investment, followed by Beijing New Materials Industry Investment Fund and Dongkechuang Capital. The funds were mainly used for production capacity expansion, team building and R&D investment.

In the past year, Zhige Technology has completed three rounds of financing worth 100 million yuan, showing that capital continues to enter the AR optical waveguide track. The company stated that its current business growth is mainly limited by production capacity, and it is accelerating the process of production expansion accordingly.

Zhige Technology focuses on the fields of AR diffractive optical waveguides and micro-nano optics, and has core capabilities such as grating design, grating master processing and nanoimprint production. On the technical path, the company adopts a parallel process route of nanoimprinting and etching, and at the same time promotes the research and development of high refractive index materials such as silicon carbide and lithium niobate to support the development of full-color optical waveguides.

At the product level, the latest waveguide lens weighs only 3g and is only 0.5mm thick. At the same time, in order to further control the thickness and aesthetics of the whole machine, Zhige Technology worked with customers to abandon the traditional easy-to-shake and heavy magnetic and snap-on myopia solutions, and instead adopted a "plano-concave" design of myopia lenses and planar waveguides for precise fit.

It is worth mentioning that in July last year, the Alibaba Tmall Elf team released the first self-developed AI smart glasses series "WOW Wow". The series includes a pair of glasses with AR display function, equipped with two Hummingbird Mini second-generation 0.15cc single green Micro LED light engines provided by JBD, and two surface relief diffraction light waveguides provided by Zhige Technology.

In terms of light transmittance, at present, the comprehensive light transmittance of Zhige Technology's waveguide sheets exceeds 98%, and the light transmittance of non-grating areas can reach more than 99%. At the same time, in terms of display performance, the company focuses on optimizing issues such as light transmittance and grating feel, rainbow patterns, and light leakage.

In terms of demand and production capacity, Zhige Technology stated that the annual order size of a single customer has exceeded 100,000 sets, corresponding to approximately 200,000 waveguides. The company has been expanding production since last year. After the expansion, the monthly production capacity will reach 250,000 pieces, corresponding to an annual production capacity of 3 million pieces. The company expects to become the first manufacturer in the industry to exceed the annual delivery of 1 million optical waveguides this year.

Guangna Siwei released an ultra-thin SiC optical waveguide fully-fitted myopia lens solution

On March 25, Guangna Siwei released an ultra-thin myopia lens solution based on silicon carbide (SiC) optical waveguide chips.

This solution uses a resin protective sheet to replace traditional glass, and combines the full lamination process to eliminate the air layer, reducing the total lens thickness to 2.4mm, which is close to the level of conventional myopia lenses. At the same time, the weight is significantly reduced, and the impact resistance is significantly improved.

In terms of optical performance, Guangna 4D adopts a grating design with gradient duty cycle and gradient depth structure to ensure efficient transmission of light within the waveguide. In addition, a metasurface structure is introduced in the non-grating area to achieve high transmittance and improve the aesthetics of the lens without affecting the internal light path.

In terms of design algorithms, the company originated from Field Tracing, FMM (strictly coupled wave theory), LPIA (local plate approximation) and other theories of the University of Jena, Germany. It also received support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China’s key R&D projects and developed its own SEEVerse optical design EDA software.

In terms of manufacturing technology, Guangna 4D uses displacement Taber lithography technology to independently realize low-cost large-area periodic structure manufacturing, effectively reducing production costs and improving production efficiency. The etching stage uses ICP, RIBE and CCP processes, which are compatible with semiconductor processes and further improve the production yield. In the manufacturing and coating process of myopia lenses, the same manufacturing and coating processes as those of internationally renowned myopia lens manufacturers are adopted to ensure the accuracy, stability and high quality of the lenses.

Guangna Siwei said that the evolution of AI technology is pushing its interaction carrier to extend from smartphones to devices that are closer to human senses. Smart glasses have become an ideal choice for AI interaction due to their unique visual and auditory proximity. However, if smart glasses with display functions cannot meet the daily wearing needs of myopia people, it will be difficult to achieve large-scale popularization.

The company's goal is to deeply integrate silicon carbide optical waveguide chips with traditional myopia lenses to create ultra-thin, lightweight, and highly impact-resistant glasses that combine intelligent display and daily wearing comfort, so that people with myopia can naturally access the AI ​​interactive system without changing their wearing habits. (Compiled by LEDinside)

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