Researchers at the Ghent University (Belgium) Centre of Microsystems Technology developed a new type of lens which will project images. The spherical curved LCD is designed to be worn on the eye without any obstruction of vision.
The new LCD lenses has no limited support on the number of pixels, in fact has a vast range of pixel sizes and numbers. Since it uses the entire surface of the lens, which can be very helpful in medical and cosmetic fields. The prototype released just shows a dollar sign across the entire curved surface of the lens and it will take years to develop such complicated application for the lenses before they can be used.
"Now that we have established the basic technology, we can start working towards real applications, possibly available in only a few years," said Professor Herbert De Smet, chief researcher on the project, according to The Telegraph. "This is not science fiction. This will never replace the cinema screen for films. But for specific applications it may be interesting to show images such as road directions or projecting text messages from our smart phones straight to our eye."
These new LCD lenses will have multiple functions such as displaying an image to read the text messages or emails received on a smartphone and GPS driving directions will also appear while driving a vehicle. These multi function lenses can also be programmed to control the amount of light a person can see or project more light into the damaged eye as a healing process.
De Smet explained the challenges experienced while developing such a lens. "Normally, flexible displays using liquid crystal cells are not designed to be formed into a new shape, especially not a spherical one. Thus, the main challenge was to create a very thin, spherically curved substrate with active layers that could withstand the extreme molding processes," De Smet told The Inquisitr. "Moreover, since we had to use very thin polymer films, their influence on the smoothness of the display had to be studied in detail. By using new kinds of conductive polymers and integrating them into a smooth spherical cell, we were able to fabricate a new LCD-based contact lens display."
