Continuous wear contact lens surface chemistry and wearability

Continuous wear (CW) contact lenses are defined as lenses composed of hydrogel polymers containing elements other than carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen that enhance oxygen permeability to an extent greater than water alone. Those elements are silicon and fluorine. Silicon is incorporated as siloxanes, and fluorine is used as fluoroalkyl. Despite the water present in CW lenses, they are not wearable without surface modification because of the tendency of siloxanes and fluoroakyls to move in the soft polymers, orient, and become enriched at the surface. Various methods of surface modification are discussed, with emphasis on the plasma technologies used by the two commercial CW lens products, Focus Night & Day and PureVision. Speculation about future directions in surface chemistry are also presented.