Application of thiol-ene photopolymerization for injectable intraocular lenses: a preliminary study

The thiol-ene photopolymerization, which could be achieved with less ultraviolet (UV) intensity and photoinitiator content was first introduced into the application of injectable intraocular lenses (IOLs), thus the damages to the eye from the UV radiation and photoinitiator toxicity were greatly reduced. The bulk samples were obtained from the mixture of poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) and pentaerythritol tetrakis(3-mercaptopropio4ate) (PTMP) by the thiolene photopolymerization. It was found that PEGDA-PTMP bulk samples had the similar transparency and the hydrophrlicity as the ones from PEGDA by homophotopolymerization. Meanwhile, when PTMP was added into PEGDA, the elastic modulus of the bulk samples was decreased and their flexibility was improved. The experimental results indicated that the thiolene photopolymerization was one potential method to obtain the ideal injectable lOLs, although many works have to be done in the future study, such as selecting proper monomers and testing the biocompati-bility of polymerized samples. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 50:174-182, 2010. [C]2009 Society of Plastics Engineers