Optical design and simulations, and dealing with systems complexity

European Photonics Industry Consortium (EPIC) recently hosted a seminar on optical designs and simulations.

Oliver Faehnle, Head, Optics Fabrication, OST University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland, and co-owner, Pandao, presented on modelling of optical fabrication chains during optical design.

Modelling optical fabrication chains
Modelling of optical fabrication chains depends on performance, optical system design, fabrication chain design, and production. It also needs human interaction. Today, there are over 360 optical fabrication technologies.

Today, you need to design for best performance, do fab chain design after optical design has been finished, and check whether fab feedback comes too late. The next stop is to balance performance and generation. We need to be modelling best fab chain. We also need instant risk and cost impact analyses during optical design.

Pandao provides optical purchasing that cuts down vendors quotes by 30 percent, minimize risk of vendors failure, and enables vendors audits. For optical production, it cuts down 20 percent on fab chains cost, does fab chain marketability analysis, enables capacity steering with one click. For optics design, it cuts down development time by factor of 2, cuts down number of meetings, and does cost impact analysis of design parameters. It also provides the necessary training for optics fab engineers.

Dealing with optical systems complexity
Emilie Viasnoff, Business Development Director, Optical Solutions Group, Synopsys, presented on how to deal with optical systems complexity?

Optics and photonics are getting from the device level to the system level. Synopsys’ driver has been consumer optical systems. Other drivers include automotive optical systems, AR/VR/MR optical systems, and aerospace and defense optical systems. We are dealing with system complexity and optimization.

AR/VR/MR is an emerging application with cutting-edge challenges and system-level constraints. AR/VR systems are collection of complex components: displays using microLEDs, holographic optical element and diffraction optical element HOE/DOE, sensors for head tracking, eye tracking, gesture tracking. There is still a long way to go despite extraordinary investments, and many important industry players.

According to IDTechEx, ‘software is nearly there, but hardware has many hurdles to overcome.’ In optics, there is bottleneck with combiner and compact camera optics. In display, there are issues with resolution and full color. In sensors, there are the emerging technologies in eye tracking and time-of-flight cameras.

For great AR/VR/MR systems, you need a great chip that is AI-enabled, fully-optimized optics, great microdisplay that can provide great images, and great cameras, leveraging metalenses. You need a simulation platform to design and test this complex system.

Synopsys Optical Platform consists of CODE V, LightTools, RSOFT, and LucidShape family. Application areas covered include imaging systems, displays including AR/VR, ADAS, and aerospace and defense. Synopsys design and simulation workflow for waveguide AR glasses includes a parametric bidirectional scattering distribution function (BSDF) as link between RSoft and LightTools.

You can also co-simulate the image quality, setting the interoperability stage for ultra-small and smart cameras. CODE V IMS analysis can understand image quality. LightTools stray light simulation can check ghost image from lens and flare caused by mechanism and sensor.

Synopsys offers design through manufacturing simulation. The simulation flow quantifies manufacturing impact on device performance. Here, metalenses are subject to patterning effects such as shape, shifted size, sidewall angle, and pillar size.

Optics have evolved to more complex systems, especially in consumer applications, such as cameras, AR/VR/MR, ADAS and A&D. Designing these optical systems needs a paradigm shift toward comprehensive simulations platforms.

Synopsys has a comprehensive portfolio to design, optimize and test, end-to-end, optical systems. Our optical design platform for multi-scale simulations is tied to Synopsys electronics platform. Beyond optics, you can go at the system-level with more simulations.

Meta optics design
Lieven Penninck, founder, PlanOpSim, talked about meta optics design software and services. The future is about nano-enabled components. Higher performance gets even more simplified, and there are miniaturized new applications. Design is costly, complex, and time consuming.

PlanOpSim supplies R&D tools to engineers and scientists that allow to unlock the maximum benefit of flat optics in a user friendly way. It offers dedicated meta-surface UI and design workflow, and high-speed and large area simulation. It also offers multi-scale simulations from nano to macroscale.

Meta-surface design workflow takes care of system model, library building, component design, ODA and system analysis, etc. An example of metalens design was design of a metalens with diffraction limited focusing and NA 0.55 for 632nm.

For meta atom optimization, there is a full maxwell solution using rigorous coupled wave analysis. Meta lens performance analysis looks at physical optics regime, flexible and fast parameter variations, direct output to manufacturing, and seamless integration to full wave calculation. Overlapping domain analysis accounts for the interaction of meta atom with neighboring structures. Local calculation avoids memory restriction of full wave calculation. ODA1 (order 2) beta release was in Nov. 2023.

Overlapping domain analysis improves meta-surface calculation accuracy, and is 18x faster than full wave calculation. PlanOpSim will be starting multi-project wafer service very soon, such as meta surface PDK. You can submit meta surface designs for manufacturing from PlanOpSim. Supported wavelength 940nm and size up to 5×5 mm.