Ace the Soft Contact Lens Challenge 2026 – Master Materials, Manufacturing & Screening!

Water uptake causes swelling of a hydrogel, expanding the network and increasing the mesh size. As water content rises, water molecules insert between polymer chains, pushing them apart and enlarging the voids within the material. In soft contact lens polymers, this means more water leads to larger internal pores or channels, so the average pore size increases. The other possibilities don’t fit because swelling and pore enlargement are direct consequences of water-driven expansion; a decrease or no change would contradict the observed swelling behavior, and “varies” wouldn’t reflect a consistent trend across hydrated hydrogels.