Fabrication of ophthalmic lenses by Fluidic Shaping

Abstract

Limited access to corrective eyewear remains a significant medical, societal, and economic challenge in developing countries, with more than 1 billion people suffering from uncorrected vision impairment. Philanthropy has failed to meet the demand, and local manufacturing using standard technologies remains beyond reach due to inadequate resources. We present a fluidic approach, leveraging the surface tension of liquid polymers, with which high-quality solid lenses, with any prescription, can be created without machining, polishing or any post-processing steps. We provide an experimentally-validated analytical model relating the geometrical degrees of freedom to the desired prescription. Using a compact low-power device, we demonstrate that the fluidic approach allows the fabrication of industry-standard eyeglasses in several minutes, opening the door to advanced manufacturing in low-resource settings.