SBIR Phase I: On-demand light-switchable adhesives

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to reduce the prevalence of medical adhesive related skin injuries (MARSI) caused by conventional medical adhesive dressings. MARSI occurs in 7% of all patients across all age groups and all healthcare settings, resulting in about 1.5 million injuries annually in United States alone. It is estimated that in 2012 about $850 million in payments to hospitals were withheld due to low patient satisfaction scores because of MARSI. The average tape-induced skin injury costs $88.50 to treat, which is 125x greater than the average cost of one roll of medical adhesive tape. This project aims to create photo-switchable adhesive dressings, which would significantly reduce MARSI, reducing overall healthcare costs through nurse efficiencies, accelerating healing, improving quality of life for patients, and decreasing use of opioid pain medications. Other industry sectors that have shown interest in photo-switchable adhesives include plastic bottle recycling, industrial sensors and productivity sensor solutions and flexible electronics manufacturing. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project presents a novel adhesive technology platform where adhesive characteristics during application and use can be decoupled from end of life / removal characteristics through photo-switching. This project differs drastically from other research endeavors to create dismantlable adhesives, which have drawbacks including high costs, difficulty or inability to scale, insufficient safety to use in the medical industry, and inability to effect stimuli response within a short time. The proposed material meets all adhesive performance specifications and takes 2.5 minutes to photo-switch. Several crosslinker mixtures and emulsion morphologies will be explored to reduce adhesion switch time, in agreement with specifications needed for broad use. The cost and amounts of crosslinkers needed, along with process control complexity, will be studied to optimize for both switching speed and cost to manufacturing. Prototype medical dressings will be prepared by coating medical grade facestock and will be characterized and tested to optimize performance. Finally, the product will be sent for ISO 10993 tests to prove the pre-clinical safety and efficacy of the dressings on an open wound. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.