Smart Contact Lenses for Wireless Medical Diagnosis

Recent progress in optoelectronic devices for wearable electronics demands their outstanding mechanical deformability for versatile systems in daily life. Especially, smart contact lenses are one of the promising candidates to provide real-time, noninvasive medical diagnostics from the physiological information on the eye and tear fluid. The eyes contain the tear fluid, so the contact lenses can monitor the physiological status of human body continuously. Previous smart contact lenses have exploited opaque and rigid device components for the operations of these electronic integration systems. Therefore, these devices could interfere with the user’s vision and be potentially dangerous to the eyes. Furthermore, the bulky equipment with an excessive cost to monitor the signals from the smart contact lens could restrict the user’s activities. These limitations reduce the convenience and features of the smart contact lenses. Therefore, we propose soft smart contact lenses which can detect the biomarker concentrations in tear fluid. For the superior stretchability and transparency, the smart contact lenses are fabricated using metal nanowires and graphene which have stretchable and transparent properties. Therefore, the resulting smart contact lens can provide a clear vision. In addition, the stretchable antenna enables the wireless communication, so the results of biosensors in smart contact lens could be wirelessly monitored. These sensor platforms can be exploited as not only smart contact lenses but also internet of things (IoTs) for the environment monitoring. Furthermore, the smart contact lens integrated with wireless display can exhibit the sensing results through the display pixel and exclude the use of bulky measurement equipment which reduces user convenience. Therefore, we believe that the smart contact lenses suggest a promising strategy towards wearable electronics for the diagnosis of diseases.