Today seems to be the day for smart contact lenses. Our earlier post showcased Google’s take on the tech, and we recently wrote about iOptik’s project as well.
So these smart lenses were developed by scientists at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university. The scientists have developed a circuit that is extremely flexible and transparent, using a polymer called parylene. A lengthy process is used to create a circuit from parylene, which winds up being thinner than a human hair, and these ultra-thin circuits have a collection of possible uses. One such application is contact lenses.
At the moment the folks at ETH are focusing on the medical benefits that the tech can offer, such as keeping an eye on ocular health (It’s Friday and puns are allowed.) The smart contacts resulting from these parylene circuits, which have been tested on an artificial eye, could be used to monitor intraocular pressure but there are still a few challenges to over come.
One of these is the need for an external power source, something that the scientists can accommodate in a lab at the moment. It would be a bit impractical to have your contacts to hooked up to a battery though.
Source: Mashable