We’ve all experienced the unpleasant feeling of removing stuck-on bandages. If you have sensitive or hairy skin it can be particularly painful, but for some patients it’s an even more acute problem. Infants, for example, who have yet to develop the epidermis layer of their skin can be particularly susceptible to injury from bandages.
Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School took on the challenge of creating a gentler bandage. Their first step was realizing that the adhesive can be left on the skin as long as the bandage itself is removed. To actually implement the separation of the bandage from the adhesive they introduced an intermediate layer of silicone that peels off the adhesive. Once removed, the glue left on the skin can be gently washed off or allowed to pop off on its own.
Some details from the article abstract in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
During removal of current medical tapes, crack propagation occurs at the adhesive–skin interface, which is also the interface responsible for device fixation. By designing quick-release medical tape to undergo crack propagation between the backing and adhesive layers, we decouple removal and device fixation, enabling dual functionality. We created an ordered adhesive/antiadhesive composite intermediary layer between the medical tape backing and adhesive for which we achieve tunable peel removal force, while maintaining high shear adhesion to secure medical devices. We elucidate the relationship between the spatial ordering of adhesive and antiadhesive regions to create a fully tunable system that achieves strong device fixation and quick, easy, damage-free device removal. We also described ways of neutralizing the residual adhesive on the skin and have observed that thick continuous films of adhesive are easier to remove than the thin islands associated with residual adhesive left by current medical tapes.
Press release: Taking the sting out of medical tape…
Study abstract in PNAS: Quick-release medical tape…
