Soft, smart contact lenses with integrations of wireless circuits, glucose sensors, and displays.

Recent advances in wearable electronics combined with wireless communications are essential to the realization of medical applications through health monitoring technologies. For example, a smart contact lens, which is capable of monitoring the physiological information of the eye and tear fluid, could provide real-time, noninvasive medical diagnostics. However, previous reports concerning the smart contact lens have indicated that opaque and brittle components have been used to enable the operation of the electronic device, and this could block the user's vision and potentially damage the eye. In addition, the use of expensive and bulky equipment to measure signals from the contact lens sensors could interfere with the user's external activities. Thus, we report an unconventional approach for the fabrication of a soft, smart contact lens in which glucose sensors, wireless power transfer circuits, and display pixels to visualize sensing signals in real time are fully integrated using transparent and stretchable nanostructures. The integration of this display into the smart lens eliminates the need for additional, bulky measurement equipment. This soft, smart contact lens can be transparent, providing a clear view by matching the refractive indices of its locally patterned areas. The resulting soft, smart contact lens provides real-time, wireless operation, and there are in vivo tests to monitor the glucose concentration in tears (suitable for determining the fasting glucose level in the tears of diabetic patients) and, simultaneously, to provide sensing results through the contact lens display.

Wearable smart sensor systems integrated on soft contact lenses for wireless ocular diagnostics.

Wearable contact lenses which can monitor physiological parameters have attracted substantial interests due to the capability of direct detection of biomarkers contained in body fluids. However, previously reported contact lens sensors can only monitor a single analyte at a time. Furthermore, such ocular contact lenses generally obstruct the field of vision of the subject. Here, we developed a multifunctional contact lens sensor that alleviates some of these limitations since it was developed on an actual ocular contact lens. It was also designed to monitor glucose within tears, as well as intraocular pressure using the resistance and capacitance of the electronic device. Furthermore, in-vivo and in-vitro tests using a live rabbit and bovine eyeball demonstrated its reliable operation. Our developed contact lens sensor can measure the glucose level in tear fluid and intraocular pressure simultaneously but yet independently based on different electrical responses.

In-situ synthesis of carbon nanotube-graphite electronic devices and their integrations onto surfaces of live plants and insects.

Here we report an unconventional approach for the single-step synthesis of monolithically integrated electronic devices based on multidimensional carbon structures. Integrated arrays of field-effect transistors and sensors composed of carbon nanotube channels and graphitic electrodes and interconnects were formed directly from the synthesis. These fully integrated, all-carbon devices are highly flexible and can be transferred onto both planar and nonplanar substrates, including papers, clothes, and fingernails. Furthermore, the sensor network can be interfaced with inherent life forms in nature for monitoring environmental conditions. Examples of significant applications are the integration of the devices to live plants or insects for real-time, wireless sensing of toxic gases.