Open Access

Projection-Type Multiview Holographic

Three-Dimensional Display Using a Single
Spatial Light Modulator and a Directional
Diffractive Device
Volume 10, Number 5, September 2018

Yanfeng Su
Zhijian Cai
Kai Wu
Lingyan Shi
Feng Zhou
Haidong Chen
Jianhong Wu

DOI: 10.1109/JPHOT.2018.2871936
1943-0655 © 2018 IEEE
IEEE Photonics Journal Projection-Type Multiview Holographic 3-D Display

Projection-Type Multiview Holographic

Three-Dimensional Display Using a Single
Spatial Light Modulator and a Directional
Diffractive Device
Yanfeng Su , Zhijian Cai, Kai Wu, Lingyan Shi, Feng Zhou,
Haidong Chen, and Jianhong Wu

School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering and Collaborative Innovation Center of

Suzhou Nano Science and Technology and Key Lab of Advanced Optical Manufacturing
Technologies of Jiangsu Province and Key Lab of Modern Optical Technologies of
Education Ministry of China, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China

DOI:10.1109/JPHOT.2018.2871936
1943-0655  C 2018 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only.

Personal use is also permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.

See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

Manuscript received September 9, 2018; accepted September 17, 2018. Date of publication October
1, 2018; date of current version October 9, 2018. This work was supported in part by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 51405317, in part by the Natural Science Foun-
dation of Jiangsu Province under Grant BK20140358, and in part by the Priority Academic Program
Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions. Corresponding author: Jianhong Wu (e-mail:
[email protected]).

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a projection-type multiview holographic three-

dimensional (3-D) display using a single spatial light modulator (SLM) and a directional
diffractive device, where a phase-only Fresnel hologram is calculated and displayed on the
SLM to reconstruct the multiview hybrid image of a 3-D object for providing the amplitude
information of a multiview light field, and a directional diffractive device covered with many
pixelated gratings is designed to guide different reconstructed perspectives into different
viewing zones for expressing the phase information of the light field. Furthermore, a four-
view directional diffractive device is fabricated by using the pixelated holographic exposure
method, and its optical properties are also measured under a collimated illumination of
the green reconstruction laser with the designed wavelength. In addition, an experimental
verification system is constructed to demonstrate a four-view 3-D display. The recorded
experimental results confirm that a crosstalk-free four-view light field is created, which is
beneficial from the precise alignment between the directional diffractive device and the re-
constructed image. Moreover, the capability of dynamic display with the proposed system is
also tested by refreshing the SLM with the sequential holograms, and the captured videos
show a promising potential for the real-time multiview holographic 3-D projectors.

Index Terms: Three-dimensional display, holographic display, computer holography, spatial

light modulator, diffraction grating.

1. Introduction
Three-dimensional (3D) displays have attracted wide attention because they can provide 3D sen-
sation close to the real life, especially in the fields of medical health [1], [2], digital signage [3], [4],
and entertainment [5], [6]. In recent years, with advances in optoelectronic display technology and
computer science, many kinds of techniques have been proposed to realize 3D displays, where
stereoscopic display represented by stereoscopic glasses has rapidly developed and gradually

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formed a commercial scale in 3D movies or games owing to its shocking 3D effect. However, the
observer needs to wear special eyewear for watching the stereo images, and the inconvenience
of having to wear auxiliary greatly limits its applications in many 3D visualization areas [7]. Alter-
natively, glasses-free 3D display techniques have increasingly been studied for providing a better
observation experience. Holography is regarded as the most promising technique for realizing
glasses-free 3D display that can present a true 3D image for human eyes with all depth cues.
In an optical hologram, both the amplitude and phase information of the 3D object are recorded
on the holographic recording media via the interference between object and reference light for
photorealistic 3D reconstruction, while the refreshable rate of the current available holographic
recording media still cannot satisfy the requirement of real-time 3D display [8]. Besides, electronic
holography based on spatial light modulator (SLM) is another approach to realize holographic 3D
display, where computer-generated holograms (CGHs) that are flexibly encoded by simulating light
propagation and interference on computers can be sequentially displayed on the SLM for dynamic
3D reconstruction. Compared with the optical holography, the holographic display with CGHs has
the advantages of fast refresh rate, high flexibility of hologram generation, and avoiding the uses of
holographic recording medium and optical path so that more and more researches in the dynamic
holographic 3D display focus on the SLM-based electronic holography [9]–[12]. However, the sat-
isfactory holographic 3D video display may hardly be achieved by using the current available SLM,
where the major limitation is the low space bandwidth product (SBP) of the state-of-the-art SLM
caused by the overlarge pixel pitch and the inadequate pixel number [13]–[16]. To enhance the
low SBP of a single SLM, many spatial [17]–[19] or time [20], [21] multiplexing methods have been
proposed, but they usually require multiple SLMs or a SLM with the requirement of ultrahigh refresh
rate, resulting in a significantly increased complexity and cost of the system. Moreover, the huge
calculated and refreshable data volume of the wavefronts of the 3D objects could also increase the
difficulty of real-time holographic 3D display.
In practice, autostereoscopic multiview 3D display shows its merits of low cost, simple fabrication,
small refreshable data volume, and good compatibility with current two-dimensional (2D) display
techniques [22]–[24]. To date, many realization methods about multiview 3D display have been
proposed and studied widely, and they can be largely classified into the pure geometrical optics
method and the diffractive optics method. In general, the pure geometrical optics method employs
parallax barrier, lenticular, micro lens, or directional backlight as the light-guide element [25]–[29],
and the 3D perception could be achieved by combining the light-guide element and the liquid crystal
display (LCD) with a precise alignment. But the method has several drawbacks of reduced light
efficiency, excessive crosstalk, and limited resolution. Furthermore, multiple projectors solutions
[30]–[32] have also been introduced to overcome the resolution limitation at the expense of system
portability and compactness.
Another kind of method for multiview 3D display is based on diffractive optics, one of the solutions
is holographic stereogram composed of many holographic pixels, namely, hogels. The holographic
stereogram is generated accordingly by multiple discrete 2D perspectives of a 3D object, and
each hogel in holographic stereogram records both amplitude and phase information of object
wave, where the recorded phase information is expressed as the holographic fringe patterns or
grating patterns. Thus, a holographic stereogram can cause a particular perspective image to be
viewed only from a particular viewing angle because the incident light is modulated by grating
patterns with different grating vectors, which may be easier to reconstruct dynamic 3D images
thanks to its greatly reduced data volume compared with the true 3D holographic display. To
generate updatable holographic stereograms, Savas Tay et al. [33] used photorefractive polymers
as dynamic holographic recording materials for optical holography, and then P.-A. Blanche et al.
from the same group [34] optimized the previous architecture to achieve a multichannel read-and-
write. However, the refreshable rate is still not fast enough to achieve real-time display. In addition,
Mark Lucente et al. [35] computed the holographic stereograms for real-time 3D display by using
a series of basis fringes to control the directional propagation of the diffracted light, but the final
display quality is severely limited by the adopted SLM, especially the small diffraction angle and the
narrow observation range.

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Except for the solution of holographic stereogram, several groups recently proposed a pixelated
diffractive element [36] for directionally guiding the diffracted light to realize multiview 3D display.
David Fattal et al. [37] proposed and fabricated a grating-based directional backlight structure to
create a wide-angle full parallax multiview lightfield, where the directional backlight structure com-
posed of diffractive grating pixels can re-direct the incident light into multiple viewing directions.
Nevertheless, the crosstalk between viewing zones is difficult to avoid completely because of the
fixed spatial frequency and orientation of the diffractive grating pixels, and the size of the fabricated
structure is severely limited due to the use of E-beam writing lithography. In order to solve these
two problems, Wenqiang Wan et al. [38] proposed a continuously variable spatial frequency lithog-
raphy system to efficiently fabricate the diffractive element consisting of grating pixels, where the
period of the fabricated grating pixel can be varied with a step length of 1 nm. Later, they combined
the fabricated diffractive element with a LCD to realize multiview dynamic 3D display [39]. For the
point-to-point imaging with LCD, however, the final display images will seriously affected by the
partial pixel defect, especially the defective points after using for a long time, while the influence of
the partial pixel defect can be significantly weakened and the defective points can be avoided in
the holographic reconstruction with SLM because each pixel in the reconstructed image plane can
be regarded as a comprehensive contribution of all of sampling units on the hologram plane. So,
in this paper, we propose a projection-type multiview holographic 3D display using a single SLM
and a directional diffractive device, where the SLM is adopted to display a phase-only Fresnel holo-
gram for reconstructing the amplitude information of multiple perspectives of a 3D object, and the
directional diffractive device is employed to guide different reconstructed perspectives into different
viewing zones for providing the phase information of multiview lightfield. The phase-only hologram
is calculated accordingly by the multiview hybrid image of the 3D object. The grating vector of each
grating pixel in the directional diffractive device, including the period and orientation, is carefully
designed based on diffractive optics, and then the directional diffractive device is fabricated on
the photoresist pixel by pixel. Furthermore, the diffraction properties of the fabricated directional
diffractive device are measured by using a green laser with the wavelength of 532 nm as the illumi-
nating light. Thereafter, by optically reconstructing the pre-calculated phase-only Fresnel hologram
with the SLM, each reconstructed perspective can be presented at corresponding viewing point
only, which leads to crosstalk-free multiview lightfield. Moreover, dynamic multiview holographic 3D
display is also realized by refreshing the adopted SLM with the sequential holograms.

2. System and Principle

Figure 1 schematically shows the proposed projection-type multiview holographic 3D display. The
information source is the multiple 2D perspectives of a 3D object, and the perspectives with parallax
can be obtained by 3D computer graphic or captured by real 3D model using camera array. Then
the obtained perspectives will be pre-processed to the multiview hybrid image with the interweaving
arrangement method for hologram calculation. Subsequently, for the hologram plane, the complex
amplitude distribution U (x, y) contributed by the multiview hybrid image can be calculated by the
Fresnel diffraction formula [40]:
  
1 π  
U (x, y) = exp (jkz) A (ξ, η) exp [jϕ(ξ, η)] exp j (x − ξ)2 + (y − η)2 dξdη (1)
jλz λz

where j, λ, z, A (ξ, η), and ϕ(ξ, η) are the imaginary unit, the wavelength, the distance between the
hologram plane and the multiview hybrid image plane, the amplitude distribution of the multiview
hybrid image plane, and the random phase distribution for smoothening the spatial spectrum of
the object information, respectively. After keeping the phase of the complex amplitude distribution
calculated above only and removing the amplitude, the phase-only Fresnel hologram of the multiview
hybrid image can be obtained as follows:

H (x, y) = arg [U (x, y)] (2)

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Fig. 1. Schematic of the proposed projection-type multiview holographic 3D display.

where H (x, y) and arg represent the phase distribution of the calculated hologram and the argument
operation, respectively. Finally, the calculated hologram would be uploaded onto a phase-only
SLM for optical holographic reconstruction, which provides the amplitude information of multiview
lightfield.
During the optical reconstruction with the pre-calculated hologram above, the sampling number
of the hologram loaded on the SLM is equal to the pixel number of the holographic reconstructed
image according to the Nyquist sampling theorem. Assume that the horizontal and vertical sampling
numbers of the hologram plane are M , N , and the horizontal and vertical pixel pitches of the adopted
SLM arex, y, respectively. Thus, the horizontal and vertical sizes of the reconstructed image are
determined by λz/x and λz/y, respectively. Therefore, the horizontal and vertical pixel pitches
of the reconstructed image can be calculated by:
λz
ξ =
M x
λz
η = (3)
N y
In addition, a directional diffractive device composed of pixelated gratings with various grating
vectors is placed at the reconstructed image plane, which is used to express the phase information
of multiview lightfield by re-directing the incident light to multiple viewing zones. Generally, R grating
pixels with R different grating vectors make up a diffractive unit in the R -view directional diffractive
device, where each grating pixel will modulate a corresponding reconstructed image pixel with a
special diffracted direction, which is depicted in Fig. 1 by taking 4-view for example. Assume that
the directional diffractive device containsS diffractive units, there will be R × S grating pixels in total,
and these grating pixels are matched with the valid pixels of the reconstructed image one by one,
where the valid pixels represent the illuminated image pixels for multiview display. Thus, the pixel
number of the final each view will be S.
Moreover, in order to create a multiview lightfield, it is necessary that the period and orientation
of each grating pixel are designed by the diffraction theory. Figure 2 schematically illustrates the
interference pattern generation and directional light-guide process of a grating pixel based on

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Fig. 2. Interference pattern generation and directional light-guide process of a grating pixel.

holographic recording and readout theory [38], [41]. Two recording plane wave beams, object wave
and reference wave, illuminate the glass substrate which is covered by photoresist with an included
angle of θ simultaneously for grating pattern generation. The relationship between the two recording
waves and the grating can be written as:
kO − kR = G (4)
where k O , k R , and G are the object wave vector, the reference wave vector, the grating vector,
respectively, and |G | = 2π/ , represents the period of the grating. When a readout beam is
incident on the recorded grating, the first-order diffraction beam can be calculated by:
kD = kI − G (5)
where k I and k D are the incident readout wave vector and the diffraction wave vector, respectively,
and |k I | = n2π/λ, |k D | = 2π/λ, n represents the refractive index of the directional diffractive device.
From Eq. (5), the period of the grating can be deduced by:

λ2
= (6)
(n cos αI − cos αD ) + (n cos βI − cos βD )2
2

where αI , βI are the included angles between the incident wave vector and x axis, y axis, re-
spectively; αD , βD are the included angles between the diffraction wave vector and x axis, y axis,
respectively.
The orientation angle φ of the grating vector from the y axis could also be obtained as follows:
n cos βI − cos βD
φ = arctan (7)
n cos αI − cos αD
For each grating pixel in the directional diffractive device, its own position in the directional
diffractive device and the predefined position of the corresponding viewing point directly determine
the diffraction wave vector of the grating pixel such that the period and orientation angle of each
grating pixel can be calculated according to Eq. (6) and Eq. (7).
Furthermore, in order to effectively avoid the unfavorable crosstalk problem, the grating pixels in
the directional diffractive device need to be well aligned with the valid pixels in the reconstructed

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image one by one, which depends on the six-dimensional (6D) precise adjusting device and the
added digital grating on the pre-calculated phase-only Fresnel hologram, and the former and the
latter control the movements of the directional diffractive device and the reconstructed image, re-
spectively. In such a way, a crosstalk-free multiview lightfield is created and the parallax images
observed at two viewing points will form a stereoscopic image for observer. However, because of
the pixelated structure of the used SLM, there exists the undesirable light in the holographic recon-
struction [42]–[44]. In order to eliminate the undesirable light, the off-axis holographic reconstruction
is firstly realized thanks to the added digital grating mentioned above. Subsequently, a band-pass
filter is set before the directional diffractive device in the reconstructed optical path for allowing
the desirable reconstructed image to pass through only such that the holographic reconstruction
without the undesirable light is generated for the final multview 3D display. Moreover, dynamic 3D
display based on the SLM and the directional diffractive device can also be achieved by sequentially
refreshing multiple pre-calculated holograms only.

3. Experiments and Results

In the following experiments, a green laser with the wavelength of 532 nm is employed as the
illuminating light source, and a reflective-type SLM (Holoeye Pluto VIS-016) with the pixel number
of 1920 × 1080 and the pixel pitch of 8 μm is used to load the phase-only Fresnel holograms for
optical reconstruction. The reconstruction distance is assumed as 900 mm, hence the size of the
reconstructed image is 59.85 mm × 59.85 mm, and the horizontal and vertical pixel pitches of the
reconstructed image are 31.172 μm and 55.417 μm, respectively. We design a 4-view directional
diffractive device with the angle separation of 6◦ and the total grating pixel number of 60 × 60
to verify the feasibility of the proposed method, where the pitch of two adjacent grating pixels
is 997.5 μm and a diffractive unit contains 2 × 2 grating pixels, thus the final each view will be
consisted of 30 × 30 pixels. Furthermore, the best viewing distance is set at 300 mm from the
directional diffractive device. Therefore, the 4-view directional diffractive device is composed of
pixelated gratings with varying periods from 946 nm to 1841 nm.

3.1 Fabrication and Measurement of the Directional Diffractive Device

The pixelated holographic exposure method is employed to fabricate the designed 4-view directional
diffractive device on the photoresist (RJZ-390), and the used photolithography setup is the contin-
uously variable spatial frequency lithography system (SVG Corporation, Nanocrystal200), whose
fabrication capability for pixelated grating array has been sufficiently proved as several works pre-
viously reported [38], [39]. During the fabrication experiment of the 4-view directional diffractive
device, a laser with the wavelength of 351 nm is used as the recording light source for performing
the holographic exposure pixel by pixel, and the photoresist sample coated on the BK9 glass sub-
strate is fixed on a monitored stage, where the stage will precisely shift a tiny step after recording
one grating pixel and before recording the next grating pixel. Furthermore, the fabricated speed of
the directional diffractive device is 40 mm2 /mins, which is much faster than the E-beam lithography.
Thereafter, the sample is developed in NaOH solutions and subsequently dried by electric blow
drier. In such a way, the 4-view directional diffractive device is fabricated, whose actual photograph
is presented in Fig. 3(a). Moreover, the surface morphology of the fabricated directional diffractive
device on the photoresist is characterized by the scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and corre-
sponding photos are depicted in Figs. 3(b) and 3(c). In addition, the size of each grating pixel in the
fabricated directional diffractive device is150 μm × 150 μm, smaller than the pitch of two adjacent
grating pixels, which provides an operation tolerance when aligning the directional diffractive device
with the reconstructed image.
Furthermore, the optical properties of the fabricated 4-view directional diffractive device are
measured under the collimated illumination of the green laser mentioned above. Figure 4(a) shows
the viewing point separation of the fabricated directional diffractive device. The collimated light
is focused to four light spots, which represent four different viewing points (view 1–4), and the

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Fig. 3. (a) Photograph of the fabricated 4-view directional diffractive device fixed in the 6D adjusting
device. (b) The SEM photo of the fabricated directional diffractive device with pixelated grating array.
(c) The partial enlargement of SEM photo of a pixelated grating.

Fig. 4. (a) The viewing point separation of the fabricated 4-view directional diffractive device. (b) The
normalized intensity distribution of these four viewing points.

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Fig. 5. (a) Schematic illustration and (b) experimental setup for the proposed projection-type multiview
holographic 3D display system. P: polarizer, OL: objective lens, PH: pinhole, CL: collimating lens, BS:
beam splitter, BPF: band-pass filter.

measured distance between the viewpoint plane and the directional diffractive device is 300 mm,
which is same as the best viewing distance designed above. Moreover, the diffraction efficiency of
the 4-view directional diffractive device is also measured, and the measurement results about actual
diffraction efficiency are shown as follows: 5.0% for the view 1; 5.2% for the view 2; 5.2% for the
view 3; and 5.1% for the view 4. Besides, the normalized intensity distribution of these four viewing
points is illustrated in Fig. 4(b). From Fig. 4(b), we can see that the four viewing points distribute
uniformly from −9◦ to 9◦ , and the angle separation between the adjacent viewing points is equal to
6◦ , revealing a good consistency with the theoretical design of four viewing points. Meanwhile, the
average angular divergence of the four viewing points is measured as 0.23 degree (FWHM), which
is slightly larger compared with the diffraction limit (0.18 degree).

3.2 Experimental Verification of the Proposed Projection-Type Multiview Holographic

3D Display
In order to demonstrate the proposed projection-type multiview holographic 3D display, an experi-
mental verification system is constructed, whose schematic illustration and experimental setup are
shown in Figs. 5(a) and 5(b), respectively. It consists of a green laser mentioned above, a polarizer,
an objective lens for expanding the laser beam, a pinhole, a collimating lens for generating the
plane wave, a beam splitter, the SLM mentioned above, a band-pass filter, the fabricated 4-view
directional diffractive device fixed in the 6D adjusting device with an adjusting accuracy of 10 μm,
and a digital camera (Canon EOS 300D) for recording the displayed images. According to the de-
sign of pixelated gratings in the 4-view directional diffractive device, four perspectives of a 3D object
is firstly pre-processed to a 4-view hybrid image with the interweaving arrangement method, and
then the phase-only Fresnel hologram of the 4-view hybrid image is calculated and displayed on the
SLM for holographic reconstruction. Subsequently, in the experimental setup shown in Fig. 5, the
fabricated 4-view directional diffractive device fixed in the 6D adjusting device is set at 900 mm from
the SLM, and the distance is equal to the reconstruction distance. Finally, the reconstructed hybrid
image is separated into four different viewing points after aligning the reconstructed image with the
directional diffractive device. As aforementioned, the crosstalk-free 4-view lightfield is created.
To test the independence of the diffracted light beams for forming four separated viewing points,
the four characters (“1,” “2,” “3,” “4”) are employed to project to the four different viewing points,
respectively. Then the phase-only Fresnel hologram is generated by using the four characters
as the four perspectives, which is shown in Fig. 6(a). Subsequently, the calculated hologram is
displayed on the SLM, and the 4-view reconstruction results are also recorded by moving the

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Fig. 6. (a) Calculated phase-only Fresnel hologram, and (b)–(e) are the recorded reconstructed images
at four different viewing points, respectively.

Fig. 7. (a)–(d) are the recorded reconstructed images of two characters (“1” and “2”) at four different
viewing points, respectively. Rotating characters, “1” and “2” (see media 1–4 and media 5–8).

digital camera, which are shown in Figs. 6(b)–(e), respectively. From the recorded results shown in
Figs. 6(b)–(e), it is clearly seen that there are no crosstalk and ghost effect when observing at the
four viewing points, proving the good independence of the diffracted light beams for forming four
different viewing points.
Furthermore, a virtual 3D object consisting of two characters (“1” and “2”) in different depths is
designed in Autodesk 3ds Max to realize 4-view 3D display. Four perspectives of the 3D object are
firstly obtained by setting a camera array in the software, and the subsequent procedures are same
as the processing procedures of the four characters mentioned above. Figure 7 shows the recorded
results from four various viewing points, and two of the parallax images form a stereoscopic image.
Obviously, character “1” is nearer than the character “2” from the observer. Moreover, the character
“1” and the character “2” rotate around the geometric center of central depth plane by refreshing
the SLM with the sequential holograms at a refresh frame rate of 20 fps, and the dynamic scene
can also be observed and captured at four viewing points. The demo videos captured in the dark
condition and the ambient light are shown in media 1–4 and media 5–8, respectively. Analogously,
the rotating characters (“3” and “D”) are also sequentially reconstructed to four viewing points,
and corresponding dynamic reconstructed images are captured in the dark condition and shown
in media 9–12, respectively. When the refreshing hologram is stopped in one of the video frames,
the 4-view images are also recorded at the predefined four viewing points, which are shown in
Figs. 8(a)–8(d), respectively. The recorded experimental results confirm that a 4-view dynamic
3D display without crosstalk is successfully achieved, which is quite suitable for the multiview 3D
projectors.

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Fig. 8. (a)–(d) are the recorded reconstructed images of two characters (“3” and “D”) at four different
viewing points, respectively. Rotating characters, “3” and “D” (see media 9–12).

4. Discussion and Conclusions

In this paper, we propose a projection-type multiview holographic 3D display using a phase-only
SLM and a directional diffractive device composed of pixelated gratings. The SLM is employed to
display the phase-only Fresnel hologram of the multiview hybrid image of a 3D object for recon-
structing the amplitude information of multiple 2D perspectives of the 3D object. The directional
diffractive device is designed accordingly by the spatial distribution of the viewing points such that
different reconstructed perspectives can be guided into different viewing zones, providing the phase
information of the multiview lightfield. Furthermore, we fabricate a 4-view directional diffractive de-
vice with the designed parameters by using the pixelated holographic lithography system, and the
optical properties of the fabricated directional diffractive device are measured by using the green
reconstruction laser with the designed wavelength. The measurement results demonstrate that
the fabricated directional diffractive device is quite suitable for the proposed multiview 3D display
system to re-direct the collimated incident light into four various viewing points. Moreover, the small
discrepancy between theoretical and tested angular divergence may be caused by the finite angu-
lar distribution of the input illuminating light. In addition, we construct an experimental verification
system consisting of the phase-only SLM and the fabricated 4-view directional diffractive device to
demonstrate a 4-view 3D display, and then several images are designed to test the performance of
the system. The recorded experimental results confirm that the system can provide 3D sensation
without crosstalk or ghost effect successfully. Besides, the dynamic display ability is also tested in
the experiments by refreshing the adopted SLM with the sequential holograms at a refresh frame
rate of 20 fps, and the captured 3D videos demonstrate that the proposed projection-type multi-
view holographic 3D display prototype has a promising potential for the real-time holographic 3D
projectors.
There are also several quantitative indicators for evaluating the imaging quality of 3D images
as follows: The first one is crosstalk, which can be defined as a proportion of the intensity of the
perceived other stray perspectives to the intensity of the perceived target perspective, which mainly
depends on the overlapping region of intensity distribution depicted in Fig. 4(b), and the smaller
overlapping region the lower crosstalk. From Fig. 4(b), it is clearly seen that the intensity distributions
between different views have no overlap, which means that the crosstalk of the experimental system
is zero. The second one is resolution, which can be analyzed from two aspects. On the one hand,
the resolution of the displayed image at each view can be usually expressed by the pixel number of
the reconstructed perspective. In the experiment, the 4-view directional diffractive device with the
total grating pixel number of 60 × 60 is fabricated to verify the feasibility of the proposed method
such that the final each view will be consisted of 30 × 30 pixels. Of course the pixel number for
display can be easily improved when the directional diffractive device with increasing total grating
number is fabricated and the SLM with higher resolution or multiple SLMs are used. On the other
hand, the image quality of optical imaging system is always determined by the impulse response
of the system. Obviously, for the holographic reconstruction system based on the SLM with finite
aperture, the real image of a point source should be a disc of confusion other than an ideal image
point so that the resolution of the displayed image in the proposed system can also be described by

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the size of the disc of confusion or the width of the impulse response. The smaller size of the disc of
confusion or the width of the impulse response means the higher resolution or imaging quality of the
displayed image. Furthermore, the width of the impulse response is positively correlated with the
wavelength of the reconstructed light and the reconstructed distance, while negatively correlated
with the aperture of the adopted SLM according to Ref. [45]. In order to obtain a higher resolution,
the wavelength of the reconstructed light and the reconstructed distance need to be decreased
properly and the aperture of the SLM need to be increased significantly. Based on the current
available SLM, the mosaic method may be an effective approach to obtain a large aperture. The
third one is energy efficiency, which mainly depends on the diffraction efficiency of the fabricated
directional diffractive device in the proposed system. In the experiment, the measured diffraction
efficiencies of the four convergent viewing points are all about 5% so that the energy efficiency
of the fabricated directional diffractive device is about 20%. Although the current efficiencies are
not very high, they are enough for the observer to clearly view the reconstructed perspectives in
the ambient light, which has been previously proved by the HP Laboratories in Ref. [37]. Besides,
in the proposed 3D display, the viewing angle depends on the spatial distribution of the viewing
points, and the positions of the convergent viewing points relies on the diffraction angles of the
diffracted light beams after modulating by the pixelated gratings in the directional diffractive device.
So, the diffraction angles of the gratings need to be enlarged if the viewing angle wants to further
expand. According to the grating equation, the gratings with smaller periods are required to satisfy
the demand for the larger viewing angle, which provides a higher requirement for fabricating the
pixelated gratings. Fortunately, the smallest period of the grating that can be fabricated by the
pixelated holographic lithography could be smaller than 300 nm, which is enough for providing a
large diffraction angle. Therefore, the final viewing range of 3D images can be further expanded.
Moreover, we intend to optimize the diffraction efficiency of the directional diffractive device by
recording the pixelated volume holographic gratings in a thick recording material. Compared with
the current pixelated photoresist gratings, the first-order diffraction efficiencies of the volume gratings
will be greatly improved, and the other orders will also be significantly suppressed. In addition, the
complex amplitude modulation techniques or speckle noise suppressed methods can be used to
optimize the image quality of the holographic reconstruction, and the chromatic multiview 3D display
will also be explored in the future.

Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the SVG Optronics Corporation for the experimental support.
They would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

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