XPANCEO, a deep-tech company building smart contact lenses as the next interface for the AI era, has partnered with Contamac, a specialist manufacturer of ophthalmic materials, to advance AR contact lenses and their manufacturing process. This collaboration focuses on making lenses suitable for longer, more comfortable wear while preserving optical quality and enabling scalable manufacturing.
XPANCEO has already addressed several core challenges behind smart contact lenses, including ultra-low-power displays, advanced optical systems, wireless power, and microbattery technology. The collaboration with Contamac will extend this work to the contact lens material and manufacturing process.
The partnership focuses on adapting Contamac’s established ophthalmic device manufacturing processes to the requirements of XPANCEO’s display and optical technologies. Contamac brings decades of experience developing advanced ophthalmic biomaterials and a portfolio that includes FDA-cleared contact lens materials, with the expertise needed to address the optical, mechanical, comfort, and manufacturing requirements of next-generation contact lenses. Together, these two companies aim to pave the way toward comfortable, durable, and manufacturable smart contact lenses.
Both soft and rigid lens options are being explored using standard geometries to test different integration methods. This project was prototyped with a rigid lens, where the stable, non-flexing structure helps maintain precise positioning of the display and optical components, delivering the image into the eye without the need for an additional external device.
Manufacturing plays a key role in transforming a highly sophisticated optical component into something comfortable and safe enough to be worn every day. The component is seamlessly integrated directly into the lens structure, allowing it to be precisely positioned, securely protected, and consistently reproduced during the manufacturing process.
A proprietary encapsulation approach is used to incorporate the component directly into the polymer, making it an integral part of the finished lens rather than an additional surface element. This process is designed to protect the technology while maintaining the clarity and performance expected of a premium contact lens and prevent any seams or surface irregularities that could compromise the comfort and safety of the wearer. Different polymer formulations and curing conditions are being tested to achieve uniform integration without seams, delamination, or localized thickening while preserving the precise positioning of the display components.These considerations are particularly critical for AR vision contact lenses, as any imperfections could affect both the quality of the displayed image and the view of the surrounding environment.
“A breakthrough in the lab only matters if it can be turned into a product people can actually use. For us, this partnership is another step toward bringing smart contact lenses into environments where hands-free access to information is critical. It moves us beyond abstract technological progress and closer to a durable, manufacturable product ready for the real world,” said XPANCEO founder Roman Axelrod.
Robert McGregor, Managing Director of Contamac, said: “The development of smart contact lenses represents an exciting next step for the ophthalmic industry, and we are delighted to be on that journey with XPANCEO.”
The collaboration follows XPANCEO’s work with JBD developing a custom micro-display for smart contact lenses. With the display itself already under development, the work with Contamac addresses the next step: integration and precise positioning of the components directly within the contact lens, thus bringing XPANCEO’s AR technology into the established ecosystem of ophthalmic materials and manufacturing while addressing critical requirements for longer wear, consistent optical performance, and scalable production.