Загрузил shubin.nickol

Electronics

реклама
Electronics
Coming Soon: Computer Display on
Contact Lenses
By Engineering360 News Desk
09 February 2016
Calling the technology a “game changer” in the field of electronics, a team from the University of South
Australia's Future Industries Institute (UniSA) have completed research on a film coating that could turn
contact lenses into computer screens as well as create other wearable visual aids.
Researchers have developed a first step to computer
screens on contact lenses.The film can be used for a range of applications, from sensors that measure
glucose levels in the blood, to electronic displays that can be worn directly in the eye. So instead of
glasses that act like computers, the lens itself could be the receiver for images. The researchers built
upon their own film coating technology to develop a biocompatible, conducting polymer at the nanoscale,
which can be cultivated directly into a contact lens. The coating conducts electricity directly onto the lens,
opening the possibility for miniature electric circuits that can be worn safely as well as unobtrusively.
The process starts by depositing a conductive polymer onto hydrogel substrates, then blending with
biocompatibilizing coconstituents. Plasma pretreatment of the dehydrated hydrogel substrate modifies it
to achieve attachment of conductive PEDOT-based surface layers. This creates a hydrophilic coating that
is engineered to be highly conductive. The breakthrough is a culmination of two years’ work on the
conductive film for the lenses, and a decade’s worth of work on thin film coatings. The research team is
partnering with a contact lens company from the UK to bring the technology to market.
By getting the materials to work in conjunction with each other, the researchers anticipate that the next
challenge will be to make the materials more robust, and to develop technology to read the information
transmitted by the polymers. The team plans to work within the partnership to scale up the manufacturing
process and develop a commercially available product. They say they believe the film could revolutionize
wearable visual aids as well as open the door to the next generation of consumer electronics.
To contact the author of this article, email [email protected]
Скачать