DR. HAILIN CONG

The NewScientist article Smart contact lens feels the pressure of glaucoma said

A contact lens with a built-in pressure sensor that could help monitor conditions such as glaucoma has been made by researchers in the US.

Materials scientists Hailin Cong and Tingrui Pan at the University of California, Davis, US, have come up with a simple method to produce PDMS components without the need for casting moulds. Their process can also make the material conduct electricity.

They added a chemical to a liquid PDMS solution which causes the mixture to set, or polymerize, when zapped with UV light.

Cong and Pan then exposed the mixture to UV light through a mask containing a circuit pattern. Only the areas hit by the light polymerize and any remaining liquid can be washed away, leaving an imprint of the circuit.

The technique can be used to create features just 10 micrometers in size.

Hailin Cong, Ph.D. is Post-doc, Biomedical Engineering Department, University of California-Davis, USA.

Hailin is researching a "Bio-Artificial implant for glaucoma treatment" which is supported by a major bio-instrumentation company. This polymer/hydrogel based eye-implant device is fabricated for the treatment of glaucoma. He is researching the anti-protein/bacteria-fouling, microfluidic cellular separation, drug delivery, biocompatibility, and bio-integration properties of the device. At the same time, polymer/nanoparticle based materials such as PDMS-Ag are being studied by him for the interest of MEMS and biomedical engineering.

He coauthored Colloidal Crystallization Induced by Capillary Force, Ionene-dynamically coated capillary for analysis of urinary and recombinant human erythropoietin by capillary electrophoresis and online electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, Investigation of microtribological properties of C60-containing polymer thin films using AFM/FFM, Preparation of Stable Colloidal Crystals and Macroporous Materials Using Diazoresin as a Thermosetting Agent, Synthesis of Calcite Single Crystals with Porous Surface by Templating of Polymer Latex Particles, and Narrowly dispersed micrometer-sized composite spheres based on diazonium-polystyrene.

Hailin earned his B.E. in Polymer Science at the Qingdao University of Science and Technology, China in 1998, his M.E. in Materials Science at the Qindao University of Science and Technology, China in 2001, and his Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry and Physics at Peking University, China in 2004.

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