At Display Week 2026, Insight Media’s Chris Chinnock caught up with John from Myrias Optics on the show floor—before the doors officially opened and the expected crowd arrived. The company was generating significant buzz with its all-inorganic nano-imprint lithography (NIL) approach to fabricating AR waveguides, a technology that promises the high refractive indices previously achievable only through costly etching processes, but at the scalable cost structure of nano-imprinting. Below is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Chris: Let’s start with the basics. What are the key performance parameters for AR waveguides, and where does Myrias fit in?
John: The two most important parameters are the refractive index of the substrate material and the refractive index of the waveguide itself—and critically, they need to be matched. Beyond matching, the higher the refractive index, the better the optical performance you can extract from the device. That is why the entire industry has its eye on silicon carbide.
The current market is focused on glass substrates in the 2.0 to 2.2 refractive index range. Longer-term, silicon carbide is the target—but the price points there remain high, even as they have been declining steadily as investment in the material grows. What we are showing here today is AR waveguide imprints on high refractive index glass. We are production-ready now, covering a refractive index range of 1.9 to 2.3, which already exceeds what currently available glass substrates can achieve. And we are also demonstrating devices with a refractive index of 2.5 imprinted on silicon carbide wafers, which positions us for next-generation AR glasses two generations out.
Chris: What is the core technology argument for Myrias? Where do you sit relative to etching and polymer-based NIL?
John: The landscape has two poles. At one end, you have direct substrate etching—it delivers very high optical performance because it works with high-index materials, but it is expensive. The fab infrastructure required costs at least ten times more than a nano-imprint facility, and processing a single wafer takes days to weeks rather than minutes. At the other end, you have polymer-based nano-imprinting, which is cost-effective and scalable, but polymer places a hard ceiling on refractive index at around 1.8 to 1.9. Polymer is also a reliability liability: it can yellow under UV exposure, develop haze in humid conditions, and has well-documented temperature limitations.
What Myrias has done is remove the polymer entirely. Our all-inorganic nano-imprint approach achieves the high refractive indices associated with etching, while retaining the cost structure and scalability of nano-imprinting. We effectively bridge the gap between the two existing approaches.
Chris: Can customers use their existing NIL equipment with your process, or do they need new tooling?
John: We are a drop-in replacement for the installed equipment base that already exists in the AR waveguide industry. Within 24 hours of installing our process on a new tool, a manufacturer can be up and running and imprinting waveguides. Companies that have already invested in polymer-based NIL equipment can transition to our all-inorganic process without a capital equipment replacement.
That is an important point as the industry scales. The large contract manufacturers who will be producing these devices at volume need to invest significant capex to meet projected demand. Our technology future-proofs those investments: it provides a clear path not only to current high-index glass substrates but all the way up to silicon carbide as that material becomes commercially viable.
Chris: What is your go-to-market strategy?
John: We are working directly with large contract manufacturers—primarily in Taiwan—who already have NIL systems installed. Several of these manufacturers are already running our process, and we are now beginning to bring end customers in to utilize that production capability. We have also been happy to see strong interest from major tool manufacturers here at the show.
Chris: Beyond AR waveguides, you are showing meta-optics as well. What is the connection?
John: The same all-inorganic imprint technology and material sets we developed for AR waveguides translate directly to meta-optic fabrication. In the meta-optics world, the performance advantages overlap considerably. To illustrate the throughput: that wafer you see on display contains over 1,000 individual lenses, and it takes us four minutes to produce. That is the fundamental advantage of nano-imprinting compared to etching—a fab capable of etching those structures would cost at least ten times more and would take days to weeks to process the same wafer.
Chris: You also offer design services and prototyping. How does that work in practice?
John: We can engage customers at multiple points depending on where they are in the development process. If a customer has an existing optical design, we can work with partners or use our internal rapid prototyping capability to produce the master, then imprint it. If a customer wants to develop a meta-optic but has no familiarity with the design space, we can handle the design as well.
Our internal mastering capability supports a rapid prototype cycle of approximately eight weeks from receipt of a design to first devices. That turnaround has been particularly valuable on the meta-optics side, where the technology is still emerging and many companies are in the process of learning how to take advantage of what metasurfaces can do. We are currently in production at 200-millimeter wafer scale.
Chris: Where is your production infrastructure located?
John: We currently have a partnership with EVG—EV Group—where we utilize their production facility in Austria for early-stage, smaller-scale production. We are also breaking ground on a dedicated facility in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, approximately two hours west of Boston. That facility is expected to be operational early next year.
Chris: The all-inorganic approach sounds straightforward in concept. What prevents a competitor from simply replicating what you have done?
John: The simplicity is somewhat deceptive. This process is built on ten to fifteen years of research by Professor Jim Watkins at the University of Massachusetts, and Myrias was spun out of his research group at UMass. Beyond the accumulated know-how, we have a broad patent portfolio covering the core inorganic nanostructure formulations, the imprinting processes, and the device architectures themselves. The materials science and process integration required to make this work reliably at production scale are not trivial to reproduce.
Chris: Any final thoughts for the industry?
John: I would just reinforce the combination of what we are offering: the economy of scale and cost structure of nano-imprinting, but with the reliability and performance of high-refractive-index materials. That is a combination the industry has been trying to achieve for some time, and we believe our all-inorganic approach is the path to get there.
Thank you John for taking the time to walk us through Myrias Optics’ technology at Display Week 2026.
Chris Chinnock is the founder and principal analyst at Insight Media, covering display technology, AR/VR, and advanced optics.
