Miniaturization and Integration of Optoelectronics for Contact Lens Embedded Display and Wireless Communication

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013

This dissertation presents the progress to miniaturize and integrate optics and optoelectronics for two applications. In the first segment, latest progress in wireless powering of several single pixel displays embedded in a contact lens platform would be demonstrated. Then in order to extend display capabilities, design and fabrication of micro LED-Fresnel Zone Plate display components will be described, which pave the way for constructing a contact lens display that is capable of producing in-focus images on the retina surface. In the second segment, a vision for a universal identification system to include physical objects into the cyberspace will be introduced. The approach includes a wirelessly read- writeable tag that holds a unique ID while a cloud-based service manages the global assignment and storage of codes and object definitions. Fundamental scaling limitation of conventional identification tags is a major motivation to utilize an optical alternative to RF for power and data transmission. As an initial proof of concept, an end-to-end prototyping of the envisioned optical identification system comprising of hardware and software infrastructure design and development would be presented, followed by preliminary packaging process development applicable for encapsulating autonomous optical microsystems.