The first stand-alone contact lens with a flexible micro battery has been unveiled by researchers from French engineering and technology universities IMT Atlantique and Mines Saint-Étienne.
"Storing energy on a small scale is a real challenge," said Professor Thierry Djenizian, who heads the flexible electronics department at Mines. The research team partnered with contact lens manufacturer LCS to enable the new battery to be encapsulated, allowing it to power a light source, such as a light-emitting diode (LED), for several hours.
"This first project is part of a larger and very ambitious project aimed at creating a new generation of oculometers linked to the emergence of augmented reality helmets for man-machine interfaces and cognitive load analysis,” said IMT optics department head Professor Jean-Louis de Bougrenet de la Tocnaye. “This opens up huge markets while imposing new constraints on precision and integration.”
The battery integrated within the lens would power other functions being developed, such as wireless RF communication and optical detection of gaze direction, he said adding the applications are vast, ranging from health (surgical assistance) to automotive (driving assistance).
Researchers said the project could also integrate advances in graphene-based flexible electronics to work with transparent materials - a great advantage in the case of a contact lens. The innovation incorporated assisted vision and a biosensory paradigm, including bio-acceptability, autonomy, computational complexity, communication systems and micro-battery.
