Diffractive waveguide developer WaveOptics has announced a collaboration with wafer bonding and nanoimprint lithography (NIL) equipment supplier EV Group to bring high-performance augmented reality (AR) waveguides to the market.

"This partnership marks an AR industry inflection point and is a critical step in the mass manufacture of high-quality AR solutions — a capability that has not been possible to date,” said David Hayes, CEO of WaveOptics. "A combination of EVG's expertise together with our scalable and versatile technology will allow AR-end-user products to be on the market for under $600 by the end of next year.”

The collaboration efforts within EV Group's NILPhotonics Competence Center framework are aligned to support WaveOptics' commitment to unlocking the mass market adoption of AR across all leading market segments — industrial, enterprise, and consumer.

"We develop new technologies and processes to outperform the most complex challenges, helping our customers to successfully commercialize their new product ideas,” said Markus Wimplinger, director of corporate technology development and IP at EV Group. “For the proliferation of our leading-edge nanoimprint lithography technology, we have created our NILPhotonics Competence Center. Within this framework, which has strong policies to protect our customers' IP, we support our customers on their product development and commercialization journey from the feasibility to the production phase. This is exactly what we are doing today with WaveOptics, an established leader in AR, to provide a truly scalable solution to end customers."

WaveOptics technology is designed for use in immersive AR experiences in industrial, enterprise, and consumer markets. The company aims for its waveguides to be the core optical component used in all AR wearable devices.

EV Group is a supplier of equipment and process solutions for the manufacture of semiconductors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), compound semiconductors, power devices, and nanotechnology devices.