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In Focus:
One lens prototype [left] has several interconnects, single-crystal silicon components, and compound-semiconductor components embedded within. Another sample lens [right] contains a radio chip, an antenna, and a red LED.
All the basic technologies needed to build functional contact lenses are in place. We’ve tested our first few prototypes on animals, proving that the platform can be safe. What we need to do now is show all the subsystems working together, shrink some of the components even more, and extend the RF power harvesting to higher efficiencies and to distances greater than the few centimeters we have now. We also need to build a companion device that would do all the necessary computing or image processing to truly prove that the system can form images on demand. We’re starting with a simple product, a contact lens with a single light source, and we aim to work up to more sophisticated lenses that can superimpose computer-generated high-resolution color graphics on a user’s real field of vision.
The true promise of this research is not just the actual system we end up making, whether it’s a display, a biosensor, or both. We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the iPhone is today, with lots of developers contributing their ideas and inventions. As far as we’re concerned, the possibilities extend as far as the eye can see, and beyond.
The author would like to thank his past and present students and collaborators, especially Brian Otis, Desney Tan, and Tueng Shen, for their contributions to this research.
About the Author
Babak A. Parviz wakes up every morning and sticks a small piece of polymer in each eye. So it was only a matter of time before this bionanotechnology expert at the University of Washington, in Seattle, imagined contact lenses with built-in circuits and LEDs. “It’s really fun to hook things up and see how they might work,” he says. In “For Your Eye Only”, Parviz previews a contact lens for the 21st century.
To Probe Further
You can find details about the fabrication process using self-assembly in “Self-Assembled Single-Crystal Silicon Circuits on Plastic,” by Sean A. Stauth and Babak A. Parviz, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 19 September 2006.
