HIGH EFFICIENCY PROJECTION DISPLAYS HAVING THIN FILM POLARIZING BEAM SPLITTERS

摘要

A projection display system includes a thin film polarizing beam splitter/combiner has first and second light transmissive substrates in the form of prisms and a plurality of thin film layers disposed between the prisms. The thin film layers and have predetermined thicknesses and refractive indices which allow unpolarized incident light to be separated into s-polarized and p-polarized light beams. Both frustrated total internal reflection and thin film interference are simultaneously employed to allow s-polarized light to be transmitted and p-polarized light to be reflected over a wide range of wavelengths and angles of incidence. The device further includes two spatial light modulators for encoding an image to be projected. By providing a different signal to each spatial light modulator, a 3 dimensional display results.