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Powering Up Your Skin

Whether smart wound dressings, body-worn medical sensors and devices, or wearables for sports and leisure – more and more applications require strong, yet gentle adhesion to the skin. However, not only is the demand for skin adhesives constantly on the rise, but so are the demands placed on them. WACKER meets these demands with high-performance silicone adhesive gels that feature a unique property profile.

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Reliable Adhesion or Kindness to the Skin – a Dilemma

Wearables worn on the skin can only perform properly if they deliver two crucial things: reliable adhesion and a comfortable feel without skin irritation. Solutions on the market today clearly show that developers often have to choose between reliable skin adhesion and high wearer comfort / skin integrity. But compromise is not only a stopgap measure in the medical field. Rather than an “either-or,” users are right to demand a clear “and.”

Key Properties for Reliable and Gentle Affixation to Skin

Repositionable

In 90° peel tests, it was clearly confirmed that SILPURAN® silicone gels exhibit constant adhesion even after repeated repositioning. Similarly, an internal wear study with wound dressings coated with the newly developed SILPURAN® adhesives showed that repositioning did not significantly affect the overall wear time achieved.

SILPURAN® | Silicone Rubber | Study Regarding the Wear Time of Wound Dressings PDF, 761.9 KB | English
Special print magazine adhesion | Wear Study Wound Care PDF, 645.1 KB | English

Long Wearing Time

An internal wear study showed that even after seven days of wear, wound dressings coated with ® 2114 silicone adhesive adhered to the skin 90 percent of the time. The level of adhesion is thus more than a quarter higher than that of the standard adhesive SILPURAN® 2100.

Strong Adhesion

In laboratory tests, the adhesive properties of SILPURAN® silicone adhesives were compared with those of two commercially available acrylate-based pressure-sensitive adhesives. One of the reference products was an adhesive marketed by its manufacturer as a sensitive product. Both steel test plates and the skin on a test participant’s forearm were used as substrates.

The measurements show that the adhesive properties of the high-adhesion silicone gels SILPURAN® 2114 and SILPURAN® 2124 come close to the values for the sensitive acrylate-based adhesive.

Lower Layer Thicknesses as a Sustainable Solution

One of the things that adherence depends on is the coating thickness of the adhesive gel. The strongly adhesive silicone gel SILPURAN® 2114 achieves good adhesion even if the film is thin. A layer half as thick was sufficient to achieve at least the adhesive strength of an adhesive layer produced from the standard adhesive SILPURAN® 2100. In the case of SILPURAN® 2124, it’s enough to apply a layer less than a third of the total thickness. So, significantly thinner adhesive layers are possible with the high-adhesion silicone gels than with the standard adhesive. Benefits include the consumption of less material and a lower weight of the end product.

Ideal Moisture Management

Comfort and adhesion depend on moisture management, where water-vapor permeability plays a major role. Since silicones are very permeable to water vapor, they are very comfortable to wear. SILPURAN® silicone adhesives with high adhesion require only low coating weights, which further improves the moisture-vapor transmission rate (MVTR). The securing component is just one aspect of moisture management; the wearable device must always be considered as an overall system.

High Gas Permeability

Wearer comfort is positively influenced by high gas permeability. SILPURAN® silicone adhesives are water-repellent but gas-permeable. Even significantly more so than other polymers - as clearly shown in laboratory tests.

More Skin Integrity

In the case of skin-worn wearables, it is important to avoid chronic irritation and inflammation. SILPURAN® silicone adhesives have a property profile that optimally preserves the integrity of the skin:

  • No trauma during removal
  • Antiallergenic, soft and pleasant on the skin
  • No residue left on the skin during removal
  • Biocompatible (meeting ISO 10993 and USP Class VI requirements)
  • Very inert material, no organic plasticizers

Two New Additions, Absolutely No Compromises

Unlike many skin adhesives on the market, silicone gels from WACKER ensure that wearable devices are reliably affixed in place, yet in a way that is gentle on the skin. To continuously improve adhesion performance and wearer comfort, WACKER is constantly developing its high-performance silicone gel portfolio. The result: SILPURAN® 2114 and SILPURAN® 2124. The two new silicone adhesives meet the highest demands in terms of affixation to the skin for short- and medium-term wear and provide an outstanding property profile:

  • High Wearer Comfort
  • Skin-compatible
  • Repositionable
  • Gas-permeable
  • High water-vapor permeability

Conventional adhesive gels can put a lot of stress on the skin and cause irritation. WACKER silicone adhesives, in contrast, hardly affect the skin at all during application and removal. Nevertheless, silicone adhesives exhibit very good adhesion performance.

Conventional skin adhesive

WACKER silicone adhesive

Stuck for Ideas and Need More Details?

WACKER’s Wound Care team would be happy to advise you on our new SILPURAN® 2114 and SILPURAN® 2124 silicone gels.

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