Meta Orion AR Glasses Prototypes are expensive to make $10,000 per pairexpensive. Orion’s most expensive component is undoubtedly its custom silicon carbide waveguide lens, but Meta says it is looking at a path that “significantly reduces costs” for its critical components in the future.
Silicon carbide has been around for a while, and because it is more efficient and has a lower thermal output, it has been mainly used as a substrate for high-power chips. Unlike silicon, silicon carbide is much more difficult to manufacture, and has challenges stemming from its material properties, crystal growth process, and manufacturing complexity.
Electric vehicles are leading the way in cost reductions, but they are far from reaching price points along with their inexpensive, abundant silicon-based equivalents. Another use case could include quantum computing, but it has its own unique challenges that Meta hopes for in next-generation material.
It’s not that silicon carbide has increased power efficiency or the low thermal output that Meta wants. This is a high refractive index of the material and ideally provides a clear, wide field of view (FOV) waveguide suitable for AR glasses, such as the class-leading 70-degree FOV seen in Orion. And the difference between traditional multi-layered glass waveguides and Orion’s silicon carbide-based waveguides is that only a few have tried it.
“Wearing glasses with glass-based waveguides and multiple plates, you felt like you were in a disco,” optics scientist Pascual Rivera says in a blog post. “There were rainbows everywhere, and it was very distracting. You didn’t even look at AR content. Then you wore glasses on a silicon carbide waveguide and it seemed like you were listening to a quiet, classic piece in the symphony. You can actually pay attention to the full experience of what we’re building. It was a complete game changer.”
Many of the world’s top electric car manufacturers have recently adopted chips based on silicon carbide, helping to lower prices. “There’s an excess capacity (thanks to the EV) that didn’t exist when we were building Orion. So, because of the high supply and low demand, board costs started to fall.”
In particular, silicon carbide wafers used in EVs it’s not Optical grades prioritize electrical performance over optical clarity, so adopting surplus EV chips is out of the question. Still, Barry Silverstein, director of the research sciences at Reality Labs, is looking at a path forward.
“Suppliers are very excited about the new opportunity to manufacture optical grade carbide silicon. After all, each waveguide lens represents a large amount of material compared to electronic chips, and all existing features apply to this new space. Filling the factory is essential, and expanding the factory is a dream. The size of the wafer is also important. The larger the wafer, the lower the cost, but the more process complexity. That said, we have seen suppliers move to 4-inch to 8-inch wafers, but some are working on precursors and working on 12-inch wafers, which will generate exponential pairs of AR glasses.”
“The world is awakening now,” adds Silverstein. “We have successfully shown that silicon carbide can bend across electronics and photonics. This is a resource that can have future applications in quantum computing. And there are signs that it is possible to significantly reduce costs. There is a lot to do, but the potential benefits here are enormous.”
This is not the first time that XR headsets have benefited directly from leading the larger consumer industry. In the early 2010s, small, low-cost displays developed for smartphones were key drivers in the kickstart of the consumer VR headset revolution. For example, if you’ve broken the Oculus Rift DK2 released in 2014, you’ll find Core’s Galaxy Note 3 display panel (such as Samsung Branding).
This goes without saying that many other components have been lifted from smartphone parts bins over the years, such as inertial measurement units (IMUs), camera sensors, and battery technology. There are similarities, but taking advantage of the victory of silicon carbide spurred by the EV boom is not yet easy with AR glasses.
Suppliers have witnessed photonics grade silicon carbide, but it is still a niche within the niche and will take years to scale up. It is effectively one of the main reasons for the meta you can’t Productize Orion today. That said, Meta is using Orion as its “internal developer kit” because it wants to produce consumer AR glasses before 2030 and therefore priced somewhere near “phone, laptop territory.”
Still, these puzzle pieces fit together, as there is a huge potential for consumer appeal. Something. Companies like Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Qualcomm all want to own a slice of the next dominant mobile computing platform, with the aim of replacing smartphones entirely.
