Contact lenses with circuits and lights

Engineers at the University of Washington could make 'Terminator vision' a reality. Using manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales, they have combined a flexible contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights. "Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside," says Babak Parviz, UW assistant professor of electrical engineering. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal a few nanometers thick and constructed light-emitting diodes one third of a millimetre across, before sprinkling the powdery electrical components onto a sheet of flexible plastic. The shape of each tiny component dictates which piece it can attach to, a microfabrication technique known as self-assembly, and capillary forces pull the pieces into position.