New medical adhesive patch sticks securely but detaches with ease

Most people remember the sharp sting of removing a bandage from the knee. For people with fragile skin, however, this moment can be more than brief discomfort. In neonates, older adults, and critically ill patients, repeated attachment and removal of medical adhesives can cause irritation, epidermal damage, and even skin stripping.

A research team led by Professors Jin-Tae Kim and Seok Kim in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH, with integrated MS-PhD students Uhyeon Kim and Hyein Jung, together with Professor Chang-Hee Son at Texas Tech University, has developed a medical adhesive patch that attaches securely during use but can be removed with markedly reduced force when needed. The work was conducted in collaboration with Professor John A. Rogers at Northwestern University and was published online in Nature Communications.

Skin-mounted medical monitoring devices, including sensors that measure cardiac activity, respiration, and motion, must remain stably attached to the body to acquire reliable physiological signals. Conventional medical adhesives have therefore been designed primarily to maximize adhesion. The challenge arises during removal. Strong adhesion can generate large peeling forces and stress concentrations at the skin surface, which may lead to medical adhesive-related skin injury (MARSI), particularly in patients with vulnerable or repeatedly contacted skin.

The research team addressed this problem using a shape memory polymer (SMP), a material that can recover a programmed shape when exposed to a specific temperature. The surface of the adhesive patch was engineered with an array of pyramidal structures. In the dormant state, these pyramids are flattened, allowing the adhesive to make broad contact with the skin and maintain stable attachment. Upon mild heating above the glass transition temperature, the pyramids recover their original geometry. This recovery reduces the effective contact area at the skin-adhesive interface, creating interfacial gaps and allowing the patch to detach with substantially lower force.

Experimental results showed that thermal activation reduced adhesion energy by up to approximately 99%, while the adhesive maintained stable attachment during use. Using three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC), the team also visualized deformation beneath the skin surface during detachment. Compared with the dormant state, the activated SMP adhesive markedly reduced peel force and suppressed subsurface skin deformation in both a skin phantom and human skin.

To improve wearability on curved body regions, the team further introduced a kirigami-inspired structure into the adhesive. This design enhanced mechanical conformability on curved areas such as joints and improved moisture transport through the adhesive layer. The adhesive was also integrated with wireless mechano-acoustic sensing devices, demonstrating stable biosignal acquisition during normal attachment and controlled detachment after thermal activation.

This technology may be particularly useful in clinical settings where sensors must be repeatedly attached and removed, such as neonatal intensive care units, geriatric wards, and long-term patient monitoring. By reducing mechanical loading during removal, the adhesive could help lower the risk of skin irritation and injury while preserving reliable device performance.

This work is meaningful because it controls the mechanical forces at the skin-device interface, rather than simply changing the adhesive material itself. By combining stable attachment with low-force removal, the platform offers a practical route toward safer skin-interfaced biomedical devices."

Professor Jin-Tae Kim, Department of Mechanical Engineering, POSTECH

Professor Seok Kim explained, "What sets this apart from existing medical adhesive technologies is that it actively switches the adhesive properties by utilizing the microstructure of shape-memory polymers, allowing it to adhere firmly during use and be easily removed when needed."

Professor Chang-Hee Son added, "Because this approach enables both reliable adhesion and gentle detachment, it can be extended toward a broader class of technologies in which adhesion needs to be actively controlled on demand."

This research was supported by the Korean ARPA-H Project of the K-Health Future Promotion Team, funded by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (RS-2025-25454431), as well as by the Mid-Career Research Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (RS-2026-25482803) and NRF programs supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Education (RS-2025-17492968).