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Human Eye Gives Researchers Visionary Design for new more Natural Lens Technology
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Drawing heavily upon nature for inspiration, a team of researchers has created a new artificial lens that is nearly identical to the natural lens of the human eye. This innovative lens, which is made up of thousands of nanoscale polymer layers, may one day provide a more natural performance in implantable lenses to replace damaged or diseased human eye lenses, as well as consumer vision products; it also may lead to superior ground and aerial surveillance technology.
It provides a new material approach for fabricating synthetic polymer lenses.
The fundamental technology behind this new lens is called “GRIN” or gradient refractive index optics. In GRIN, light gets bent, or refracted, by varying degrees as it passes through a lens or other transparent material. This is in contrast to traditional lenses, like those found in optical telescopes and microscopes, which use their surface shape or single index of refraction to bend light one way or another.
Polymer Lenses – These light-gathering polymer lenses are 3.5 times more powerful than glass, and are the first commercial nanolayered product to come out of many years of R&D at Case Western Reserve University. To create the lenses, a 4,000-layer film is coextruded, and then 200 layers of film are stacked to create an 800,000-nanolayer sheet. Photo courtesy Michael Pont
Optics Express- A bio-inspired polymeric gradient refractive index (GRIN) human eye lens
See more and subscribe to NextBigFuture at 2012-11-15 15:42:05 Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/11/human-eye-gives-researchers-visionary.html
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