Glasses-free 3-D visualization with multi-layered transparent cholesteric films

Fabrication of a three-dimensional (3D) device with volume-filling autostereoscopic imagery provides a unique solution to the accommodation-convergence mismatch problem in a conventional stereoscopic 3D display. We demonstrate a volumetric 3D display consisting of a stack of sequentially-driven transparent cholesteric films that illuminate every point in the display volume to generate a synthetic 3D image. Transparent cholesteric films comprise of the reverse-mode polymer-stabilized cholesteric texture (R-PSCT) that exhibits > 85% transmittance in its off-state (Grandjean texture) and <15% transmittance in its on-state (focal-conic texture). The polymer network in the R-PSCT is formed with the mixture of reactive monomers: RM6 and RM257. The electro-optical measurements show a strongly influence of concentration of each reactive monomer in the total mixture on the optical contrast and driving voltage of R-PSCT films. Hence, we optimize the composition of reactive monomers in R-PSCT to achieve a low driving voltage, high optical contrast and high electro-mechanical stability. Furthermore, we fabricate a multi-surface and a see-through volumetric 3D display prototype that consists an optical element with 15 R-PSCT films that are sequentially-switched with a microcontroller and operated at 250 Hz. A high-speed DLP projector is used to project a time-multiplexed series of two-dimensional images that are used to build the multi-planar volumetric images.