Microstructured light guiding plate for single-sided light emission as light source for room illumination

Jakubowsky, Michael; Hubschneider, Carolin; Neyer, A.; Fang, Yan; Boer, Jan de

doi:10.1364/ao.58.000076

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

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“…Numerous novel ideas have been put forth in the making of such light-emitting transparent panels, which can be categorized into a few major groups based on their working principles. The most straightforward implementations are based on surface relief or embedded physical perturbations, on or within a transparent substrate, using micro-features [1,2,7,10,[13][14][15][16][17][18], particles [8,12], and/or buried reflecting surfaces [3,4] that abruptly disturb the propagation of light that interacts with them. These approaches can be well-suited in applications that work with a broad spectrum of light.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visually clear diffusive light panel with embedded semi-reflective rough-surface planar outcouplers

Park

Stoeber

2023

J. Micromech. Microeng.

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We present a visually transparent light panel that passively emits diffused light. The panel is a light guide with semi-reflective thin-film blades buried in the panel acting as outcouplers. The semi-reflective blades can be tilted relative to the light panel surface and have a rough surface texture to scatter the light incident upon them while the transmitted light retains its incident angle. We show that the texturization of the blades can be done following a simple photolithographic process involving a polymer photomask. The polymer photomask has embedded micron-scale air bubbles that disturb the exposure intensity distribution. The surface topology of a photoresist film exposed using this photomask becomes rough, which is subsequently used as a mold to create the rough-textured outcoupler blades with a well-defined outline. Alternatively, molding can occur from commercially available rough surfaces with limited opportunities for a customized outline. We demonstrate that prototype light panels are indeed visually clear, and we show that by changing the angle between the incident propagating light rays and tilted semi-reflective blades, the ratio between the amount of emitted light through both surfaces of the panel can be biased.

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