Encapsulated Smart Contact Lens Electronics
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Solution Overview
Problem
Smart contact lenses with integrated electronics face challenges in biocompatibility and comfort due to exposure of electronic components and excessive thickness, necessitating a solution that ensures safety and user comfort while allowing for scalable and affordable production.
Innovation Solution
A contact lens design featuring a hydrogel that fully encapsulates electronic components such as sensors, batteries, and microfluidic channels, using materials like polyvinyl alcohol and carbon nanotubes, ensuring biocompatibility and maintaining a thin profile for comfort, with a method involving heating solvents and hydrogel precursors to form the lens around the components.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If electronic components are printed onto the surface of the lens, then the lens can be produced easily, but biocompatibility deteriorates because electronic components are exposed and may be harmful to the eye
Solution Approach 1:
The electronic component is nested within the contact lens structure, specifically positioned between the front and back lens substrates. The component is fully encapsulated by the hydrogel matrix, creating a nested configuration where the electronic element is contained within the biocompatible lens environment, preventing direct exposure to the eye while maintaining integration within the lens system.
Solution Approach 2:
The hydrogel matrix serves as an intermediary material between the electronic component and the ocular environment. This intermediate layer encapsulates the electronic component, providing a biocompatible barrier that prevents direct contact between potentially harmful electronic materials and the eye, while still allowing the component to function within the lens.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If electronic components are integrated between two lenses, then biocompatibility is improved, but the lens thickness increases excessively leading to discomfort
Solution Approach 1:
The contact lens utilizes thin hydrogel substrates that are flexible and conformable. The electronic component is integrated within a single lens structure using thin front and back substrates, avoiding the need for thick multi-lens assemblies. The hydrogel material allows for thin-film construction that maintains biocompatibility while minimizing overall lens thickness and ensuring user comfort.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention optimizes the thickness parameters of the lens substrates and the electronic component to achieve a balance between protection and comfort. By controlling the thickness of the front and back lens substrates and the encapsulation layer, the overall lens thickness is reduced to acceptable levels while maintaining adequate protection of the electronic component and ensuring biocompatibility.
3Ease of operation
If the lens thickness is reduced for comfort, then user comfort is improved, but the electronic component may become exposed or malfunction
Solution Approach 1:
The electronic component is nested within the lens structure with sufficient encapsulation thickness maintained even in thin-lens designs. The component is positioned between the front and back substrates with adequate hydrogel material surrounding it, ensuring protection is maintained regardless of the overall thin profile of the lens, thus preserving reliability while achieving comfort.
Solution Approach 2:
The use of thin but sufficiently robust hydrogel substrates provides adequate protection for the electronic component while maintaining a thin overall lens profile. The flexible thin-film construction ensures that the encapsulation layer maintains its protective function even at reduced thickness, preventing component exposure and malfunction while ensuring user comfort through the thin, conformable design.
Data Source
AI summary
A contact lens may include a lens comprising a hydrogel configured to be worn on an eyeball. A contact lens may include an electronic component fully encapsuled within the lens, wherein the electronic component may include a sensor, a battery, a supercapacitor, an electronically controlled microfluidic channel, or combinations thereof. Methods for producing such a contact lens are also disclosed.