Create contact lenses that can project surface images

2012/02/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Teknologia
• Zoologia

A team of researchers from the University of Washington and Aalto University of Finland have developed prototypes of contact lenses capable of projecting surface images. At the moment, the device has only one pixel, but researchers say it is enough to prove it works. Finally, they indicate that short messages can be displayed directly in the user's eye.

"For the first time we have managed to power and control a screen installed in a living eye without wires," explains Baba, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington. In fact, the lenses generated have been tested in the eyes of live rabbits and, as indicated in the Journal of Micromechanis and Microengineering, no side effects have been observed in the eyes of rabbits.

To receive and visualize information without cables, the contact lens has, on the one hand, an antenna to receive energy from an external source. On the other hand, it has integrated a circuit to store the received energy and transmit it to a transparent sapphire chip. The chip has a blue LED of one-third diameter. Today, the lens can capture the necessary energy at a distance of one meter without putting it anywhere. In the rabbit's eye, the energy source must be two centimeters away.