Speaker: Sonny Vo, PhD, Director of NanoFabrication, Leia Inc.
Title: Manipulating Holograms in the Palm of Your Hand
Abstract: At LEIA inc. we are developing an LCD-based interactive holographic display specially designed for mobile devices. We’re the manufacturer of the world’s first holographic 3D displays for mobile applications. Core to our technology are diffraction gratings defined using advance deep ultra-violet (DUV) lithography on an inexpensive glass backlight substrate. These nanometer-scale diffraction gratings can directionally scatter incident light from an LED source. A liquid crystal display (LCD) is elegantly placed on top of the backlight to seamlessly modulate the light rays to form a hologram, that is, a virtual object made entirely of light. The Leia display requires no glasses and no eye-tracking. The 3D graphical contents are simply derived from a chrome-based platform using open-source WebGL and java-based scripting languages.
The ability to realistically render the world in 3D enables a wealth of possibilities and will dramatically enhance established industries such as healthcare, retail, design and architecture, and education. In automotive, fully rendered and realistic, glasses-free 3D images from a display screen will directly impact the driver-passenger experience, ushering in a new era of car-infotainment, with maps and navigation for safer rides and a safer city; drivers and passengers alike will receive an unprecedented augmented environment that redefines a ‘ride’ in a car to one that is an ‘anticipated experience.’ In this talk, we will give an overview of the fundamental physics and the production of our nanostructure diffraction gratings that lie at the heart of our technology.
Speaker Biography: At Sonny Vo received his undergraduate degree at UCLA specializing in low temperature experimental physics and a Ph.D in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 2012 in semiconductor lasers and nano-photonics under Professor James S. Harris (Hi Coach!). Subsequently he became a Post-Doctoral research fellow at HP Laboratory in Palo Alto where he was involved in numerous projects essential to the future of optical communication, quantum computing and the next generation lcd display. One of the fundamental elements that will enable this future is a directional backlight for efficient coupling of light. This work was featured on the cover of Nature in March 2013, and formed the foundation of Leia’s glasses-free 3D technology. Sonny, aka, Director Wonder, now directs the advance nanotechnology division within Leia Inc. His team of ‘NanoStars’ are developing technologies with the potential to pave the way for the future of optical computing, communication, and immersive technologies that bring the digital world into the physical world.
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