Electroanalytical Assessment of the Oxygen Permeability at the Gas‐Solid‐Liquid Interface in Polymer‐based Materials for Lens Applications

International audience; The design of efficient electrochemical setups to precisely and timely quantify the oxygen permeability, which dictates how the lens let O2 to reach the eye, is important for the development lens-based materials. We report herein a home-made electro-analytical platform made of a 3D-printed diffusion electrochemical cell to assess this parameter. The design overcomes edge effects and allows analysis under conditions similar to lens wear where the liquid is in contact to the inner surface while the gaseous O2 is in contact with the outer surface. The testing of three types of contact lens materials (flexible polymer, rigid polymer, and gel-type) showed that the O2 permeability can be fairly well evaluated by the chronoamperometry study of oxygen reduction reaction. Under conditions similar to those of lens wear, our findings showed that the measurement error was 6 %, which offer an alternative to the classic gas-to-gas method for O2 permeability determination.