First flexible conductive material attached to soft contact lenses

MIT Technology Review : Electronic systems for monitoring glaucoma patients or for displaying images have been attached to hard contact lenses over the past several years. Now, Jang-Ung Park of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea and his colleagues have mounted an LED on an off-the-shelf soft contact. They were able to create an adhesive, transparent, highly conductive, yet flexible circuit by creating a mesh of layers of graphene and silver nanowire. This allowed them to overcome the normally low conductivity of organic conductors and graphene. The material was added to the contact by depositing it as a liquid while the surface of the contact was spun to evenly distribute the material. The material maintains 94% transparency, and the contact remains flexible. Then the researchers mounted a single LED to the contact as a proof of concept. The technique could be used for on-contact displays, they say, but may be more useful for medical monitoring systems.