Angular-resolution-improved light field display architecture using polarization dependent deflection metasurface and polarization switching

High-resolution and accurate view projection are essential for the performance and user experience of advanced autostereoscopic displays. This study presents an angular-resolution-doubled, time-multiplexing autostereoscopic light-field display architecture comprising the highly collimated backlight, the liquid crystal display, and the polarization-switchable pixelated deflection array consisting of a polarization switching device and a polarization-dependent deflection metasurface pixel array. With judicious designs and high-fidelity fabrication of the TiO₂ metasurfaces, high deflection accuracies (with angular errors of <0.2°) over the target deflection angle range (18 views over the ∼50° FOV) and polarization-switchable deflection were achieved experimentally for common-thickness R/G/B color sub-pixel metasurfaces. The over-etching was also shown to offer a robust fabrication approach and structure for ensuring high-transmission deflection metasurfaces. Inter-view crosstalk could be suppressed to low levels by adopting highly collimated backlights. A proof-of-concept sample 15 × 15-pixel-group, color four-view time-multiplexing autostereoscopic light-field display integrating all the key concepts and components developed was demonstrated, validating the feasibility of the proposed architecture. The results of this work highlight the potential and benefit of adopting metasurfaces for advanced 3D displays.