Skin Adhesives with Controlled Adhesion by Polymer Chain Mobility

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Jan 9;11(1):1496-1502. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b18947. Epub 2018 Dec 28.

Abstract

Wearable devices have attracted a lot of attention because of their importance in the biomedical and electronic fields. However, as one of the important fixing materials, skin adhesives with controlled adhesion are often ignored. Although remarkable progress has been achieved in revealing the natural adhesion mechanism and biomimetic materials to complex solid surfaces, it remains a great challenge to explore nonirritant, controlled skin adhesives without surface structure. Herein, we present skin-adhesive patches of polydimethylsiloxanes (SAPs) with controlled adhesion by simply modulating polymer chain mobility at the molecular level. The controlled adhesion of SAPs strongly depends on the proportion of polymer chains with different mobility exposed to the solid surface, including free chains, dangling chains, and cross-linking chains. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate that the SAP can act as a skin-friendly fix to monitor the human pulse by integrating with the poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluorethylene)/reduced graphene oxide (P(VDF-TrFE)@rGO) nanofiber sensor. This study provides a clue to design durable and skin-friendly adhesives with controlled adhesion for wearable devices.

Keywords: chain mobility; cross-linking; polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS); skin adhesives; wearable devices.