Electronic devices with drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundles

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11525955-B1
Application number	US-202117327441-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	May 21, 2021
Priority date	Jun 5, 2020
Publication date	Dec 13, 2022
Grant date	Dec 13, 2022

Abstract

An electronic device may have a display, a display cover layer, and a drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle. The coherent fiber bundle may have an input surface that receives an image from the display and a corresponding output surface to which the image is transported. The coherent fiber bundle may be placed between the display and the display cover layer and mounted to a housing. The coherent fiber bundle may have fiber cores with bends that help conceal the housing from view and make the display appear borderless. The coherent fiber bundle has filaments formed from elongated strands of binder in which multiple fibers are embedded. Sheets of filaments are stacked and fused together to form a block of material that is subsequently drawn to form the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An electronic device, comprising:
a display configured to produce an image; and
a drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle overlapping the display, wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle is configured to receive the image at an input surface and to transport the received image to an output surface and wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle comprises a coherent fiber bundle block drawn from a fused set of sheets of filaments.

2. The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle has fibers and wherein 90% of the fibers in the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle are separated from neighboring fibers by gaps of less than 0.7 microns.

3. The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle is characterized by a fiber bundle draw ratio of at least three.

4. The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle has fibers and wherein at least 90% of the fibers in the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle are angularly misaligned by less than 0.8°.

5. The electronic device defined in claim 4 wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle forms an image transport layer with a thickness of at least 1.2 mm.

6. The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle has fibers and wherein 90% of the fibers in the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle exhibit lateral misalignment at the input surface of less than 30 microns.

7. The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the display has pixels, wherein each pixel has a lateral dimension and wherein 90% of the fibers in the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle exhibit lateral misalignment at the input surface of less than 50% of the lateral dimension.

8. The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle comprises additional coherent fiber bundle blocks fused together with the coherent fiber bundle block and wherein each of the additional coherent fiber bundle blocks is drawn from a respective fused set of sheets of filaments.

9. The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle has additional fused sheets of filaments.

10. The electronic device defined in claim 9 wherein each fused sheet of filaments has fiber cores with cladding layers embedded in binder.

11. The electronic device defined in claim 1 wherein each filament in the fused set of sheets of filaments has multiple fiber cores.

12. The electronic device defined in claim 11 wherein the fiber cores include fiber cores with multiple bends.

13. An electronic device, comprising:
a display having pixels configured to produce an image; and
a coherent fiber bundle that overlaps the display, wherein the coherent fiber bundle comprises fibers, wherein each pixel has a lateral dimension, wherein the coherent fiber bundle has an input surface that is configured to receive the image and has a corresponding output surface to which the image is transported, and wherein 90% of the fibers in the coherent fiber bundle exhibit lateral misalignment at the input surface of less than 50% of the lateral dimension.

14. The electronic device defined in claim 13 wherein the coherent fiber bundle comprises a drawn stack of fused filament sheets that is characterized by a draw ratio of at least 2.5.

15. The electronic device defined in claim 14 wherein the drawn stack of fused filament sheets has fused filaments each of which includes more than one of the fibers.

16. The electronic device defined in claim 15 wherein the fibers include fibers with multiple bends.

17. The electronic device defined in claim 13 wherein 90% of the fibers are separated from neighboring fibers by gaps of less than 0.7 microns.

18. The electronic device defined in claim 13 wherein at least 90% of the fibers are angularly misaligned by less than 0.8°.

19. An image transport layer configured to receive an image at an input surface and to transport the image to a corresponding output surface, comprising:
a drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle extending between the input surface and the output surface, wherein the drawn sheet-packed coherent fiber bundle is drawn from fused sheets of filaments, each sheet having multiple fused filaments.

20. The image transport layer defined in claim 19 wherein each filament includes multiple fibers in binder.

21. The image transport layer defined in claim 20 wherein 90% of the fibers are separated from neighboring fibers by gaps of less than 0.7 microns.

22. The image transport layer defined in claim 20 wherein at least 90% of the fibers are angularly misaligned by less than 0.8°.

Assignees

• Apple Inc

Inventors

• Lin Wei
• Gupta Nathan K
• Gulgunje Prabhakar
• Majumdar Shubhaditya

Classifications

• G02B6/08 Primary

  with fibre bundle in form of plate · CPC title

• G02B6/065 Primary

  with dynamic image improvement · CPC title