Contact lens from photopolymerizing the PEGDA modified hydrogel materials: material characterization and optical simulation

Many people worldwide suffer from myopia or hyperopia due to the refractive errors of the cornea. Polymer Contact Lenses (CLs) with high Refractive Index (RI) and low Abbe number are currently used to correct myopia or hyperopia. In this paper, an innovative polymer composition was applied to produce CLs, and subsequent optical simulation was carried out to simulate the imaging effect of the CLs. A silicone hydrogel CL material was prepared by using Polyethylene Glycol Diacrylate (PEGDA) as crosslinking agent along with other chemical monomers. Fourier infrared spectroscopy was performed on this material and the resulted spectra showed that this CL material created good polymerization crosslinking reaction under ultraviolet irradiation. Furthermore, the Refractive Index (RI) of the mixed material was measured to be 1.4450 and the Abbe number to be 47.89, which were input to Zemax software for optical simulation. The CL design was optimized on a Liou and Brennan Eye (LBE) model with 200-degree myopia. The effect of the CL on image quality at four different object distances (infinity, 1000 mm, 500 mm and 250 mm) was evaluated at 0° field of view and the results demonstrated that the usable image sharpness can be obtained for all of the four object distances, indicating that the CL made of this material can achieve good optical aberration correction ability.