Silicon Carbide Waveguides Pros and Cons
Quick summary· AI-generated
Karl Guttag examines Silicon Carbide waveguide technology featured in Meta's Orion prototype and increasingly adopted by companies like SEEV (used in Nimbo X1), Coherent, and Magic Leap. The article balances promotional claims about SiC's advantages—such as enabling high field-of-view displays—against practical drawbacks that proponents often downplay, drawing on technical presentations at industry conferences and published research. Guttag leverages input from co-host Radu Reit and his photo archives from multiple conferences to provide a comprehensive analysis of the technology's trajectory toward mass production and cost reduction.
Excerpt from KGOnTech
Introduction
At Meta Connect in September 2024, Meta demonstrated its Orion prototype, which uses Silicon Carbide (SiC) diffractive waveguides to support a 70-degree FOV (see my several articles and videos on Orion). On several occasions, Meta has stated that it hoped Orion’s demonstration of SiC waveguides would encourage further development of the necessary infrastructure and optical-grade SiC, helping to drive down costs. Meta also made the technical case for SiC waveguides at SPIE’s AR/VR/MR conference in January 2025 in their paper The evolution of display materials and processes for full augmented reality.
Several China-based companies, including SEEV, Moldnano, LLVision, and Goeroptics, were likely already developing SiC waveguides before the Orion demonstration and are moving toward production. In the US, Coherent has been developing SiC substrates and promoting their use in AR for some time (see their 2024 article), and Magic Leap has publicly said it is developing SiC waveguides.
As I often say, proponents of a given technology tend to be very vocal about the pros but often leave it to others to speak to the cons. People are often enticed by the pros without considering the cons, i.e., “Too few factors analysis.” In this article, I will try to give a balanced analysis based on what I know so far about SiC waveguides.
At the SEMI Core-Display Conference held on October 29, 2025, Dr. Shi Rui, CTO & Co-founder of SEEV, delivered a keynote speech titled “Mass Production Technology for Silicon Carbide Diffractive Waveguide Chips.” On August 28, 2026, the Nimbo X1 Kickstarter campaign launched. The Nimbo X1 uses a SEEV SiC waveguide (openly admitted by both companies). It was the Nimbo X1 campaign and related YouTube video that inspired me to take a deeper dive into the pro’s and con’s of SiC waveguides.
During the same timeframe as the Nimbo 1 Kickstarter, Radu Reit and I recorded our monthly XR display update, which included an hour-long discussion of SiC waveguides and the Nimbo X1, on our Display Skeptics Patreon channel (https://lnkd.in/gUFkFNeb). Some of the content I generated for this video, along with Radu’s additional technical input, formed the start of this article. Since the video, I have done some additional study of the published articles and my photo library from various conferences.
Speaking of conferences, I wanted to once again say that I will be presenting both a master class and co-hosting a panel session at MicroLED and…
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