SBIR-STTR Award

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will be in the area of optical materials. Optical materials are widely used in applications such as eyeglasses, cameras, cell phones, fiber-optic cables etc. Novol aims to push the frontiers of innovation in optical material research by creating new polymers with a much better balance of optical properties relative to glass while being tough and lightweight. The goal is to provide significant improvement in vision quality for patients with ophthalmic disorders. Particular benefit could be seen in pediatric and hyperopic prescription markets where choices of lens materials are restricted due to greater demand on lens properties. Long term project goals will focus on making lower-cost and more efficient lens assemblies for imaging, diagnostics and surveillance applications. A parallel aim of the research is to reduce the environmental impact of existing optical polymers, which are often made from highly toxic materials. Commercial opportunity presented through this work will not only benefit the end users but also the lens manufacturers through its ability to utilize safe and bio-derived monomers like sugars for making a highly important category of materials in today?s markets.The technical objectives in this Phase I research project are to demonstrate optical and mechanical advantages of a new class of polymers made from sugars. Sugars have versatile properties arising from their complex structures, presence of heteroatoms and multiple functional groups. This research aims to bring together principles of organic, polymer and biological chemistry to create a new type of highly transparent, strong and refractive polymers useful in many optical applications, including lenses. Recent innovation in optical materials has focused largely on increasing a singular lens property, refractive index, mainly to afford thinner lenses for prescription eyewear applications. Technical objectives of this work go beyond the need to create just high index optical polymers and focus on making polymers that balance high refractive index with other critical properties of optical materials such as low dispersion of light and desirable mechanical strength. Lens materials with such well-balanced properties are currently unknown and if created, will provide unique advantages for many commercial applications of lenses such as prescription eyewear, sports accessories, camera assemblies and device screens. Another technical objective of this effort will focus on co-polymerization of sugar derivatives with known synthetic polymers to improve the properties and bio-based content of existing polymers.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this SBIR Phase II project is to deliver a bio-based and functionally improved optical polymer that can be made into a lens. The lens product has commercial applications in rapidly growing mass-markets like Prescription eyewear that is growing significantly due to onslaught of myopia. Using scientific data, this proposal demonstrates an improved commercial product for myopia when compared to Polycarbonate, the most popular eyewear material in US. Work proposed in Phase II focuses on development of the polymer at large scale and its conversion to lenses using a lower-cost, one-step molding process that can also reduce current industry wastages by as much as an estimated 90%. For establishing suitability of the product towards commercial applications, the Phase II goals include product testing in lab as well as with real subjects to generate marketable data. Finished prescription lenses are a ~$30 billion plus market, with ~70% of lens sales serving myopic patients, who will see a tremendous benefit from using our ultra-clear lens. Broader impact of this technology proposal is to make eyeglasses exponentially more affordable in contrast to today's high costs. Price controls exerted by market monopolies like Luxottica and Essilor on finished lenses pose a huge barrier to base of pyramid markets. Our easy-to-make lens technology simplifies the eyewear supply chain for benefit of these unconventional markets and can lower costs dramatically for billions of people around the world, who are separated by a pair of glasses from otherwise blindness.This SBIR Phase II project proposes to leverage properties of sugars to build an optically clear, transparent polymer of good refractive index, low dispersion and low density. In commercial applications of this polymer as a prescription lens, it thus represents a state-of-the-art product that combines the best properties of various incumbent eyewear materials into one. A key intellectual merit of this SBIR project is to achieve a plastic with optical properties similar to glass, a gold standard in optical materials. Our chemistry platform is 90% bio-based, a unique value proposition in prescription lens industry, where use of extremely toxic and hazardous chemicals is common. Phase I work has also led to the development of a novel route of manufacturing lenses which can lower cost barriers for setting up optical labs, expedite the process for making prescription lenses and cut wastages in current prescription industry. In Phase II, our goal is to methodically develop the process for making lenses using Novol's polymers and obtain data to translate the proposed technology to a commercially preferred lens product with special benefits to myopic patients.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.