Diffractive backlight grating array for mobile displays

Abstract— The display backlight unit (BLU) is the most power‐consuming subunit in mobile liquid‐crystal displays. The state‐of‐the‐art BLUs utilize scattering, refractive, and reflective microstructures to generate a uniform distribution of white light through the display. More effective means of transmitting light through the display color filters could be obtained by using diffraction, but previously proposed diffractive backlights do not fully utilize all the possibilities to design gratings effectively for optimal color separation and outcoupling. This paper presents a new pixelated diffractive backlight grating array as an approach for overcoming these obstacles in BLU design. A model array was fabricated to couple out red, green, and blue primary colors from the respective subpixel locations. The results show that it is possible to manufacture such an array and that the light couples out as intended, giving a starting point to design mobile‐display modules with low light‐transmission losses.