Projects

About WeArAble

Soft wearables with high energy density: Merging chemical biology and silicone chemistry with active compliant devices.

The WeArAble center will build the scientific foundation for soft wearables with the high energy density needed to enable thin and nearly invisible prosthetics, soft exoskeletons, and haptics. Comfortable wearables today cannot generate enough force to serve their claimed function. We will solve that challenge in WeArAble.

Our cross-disciplinary center will pioneer a unique approach to soft, comfortable wearables: the integration of biologically tailored fibers into soft silicone elastomers. These soft materials will resemble soft tissue in compliance and function (sensing and actuation). By combining synthetic biology, chemical synthesis, and fiber technology, unprecedentedly high energy densities for soft materials will result. The materials will be operated electrically, enabling efficient control of complex motion. Our soft actuators embrace their inherent softness as a key advantage and enable the development of powerful wearables allowing for useful forces.

The center’s primary research activities focus on:

• Molecular design of silicone elastomers resembling soft tissue and with electro-mechanical robustness to allow for stable fibers.
• Tailoring of bacteria that enable specialized materials with, e.g., high conductivity or tissue adhesion, allowing for the integration of living materials, the silicones into fibers, and ultimately into the wearables.
• Architecture of biocompatible flexible devices that encompass ultra-soft materials while providing useful forces and yet remaining mechanically transparent to allow for versatile use on (or ultimately in) the human body.

WeArAble will generate the knowledge and innovations for a paradigm shift towards mechanically transparent (i.e., imperceptible, not hindering motion nor even the sense of touch) active wearables that benefit many segments of society (medical, sports, in,industrial and entertainment scenarios), and improve inclusion of physically impaired people.

Partners

The WeArAble center is organized around three fundamental scientific challenges, each headed by a partner. All three partners will solve their respective challenges in close collaboration with the other partners.

• Project leader: Professor Anne Ladegaard Skov, Centre Leader for the Danish Polymer Centre, DTU Kemiteknik.
  The role of Professor Anne Ladegaard Skov is to lead the project, and her group is responsible for the modeling, development, and synthesis of new and advanced silicone network structures with high energy density and self-healing abilities.
  Professor Anne Ladegaard Skov will be responsible for Challenge 1: Understanding how silicone polymer structure, microscopic network structure, and fiber interaction affect energy density and mechanical properties.
  
  
• Partner: Professor Herbert Shea, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Neuchatel, Switzerland.
  The role of professor Herbert Shea is to develop soft wearable actuators for haptics and exoskeletons, addressing open challenges using novel materials made by synthetic biology in the shape of fibers or composite materials from silicone. He will leverage his lab’s unique expertise in developing new architectures for soft electrically driven devices, and manufacturing processes and using them for on-skin haptics.
  Professor Herbert Shea will be responsible for Challenge 3: Understanding the interaction of fiber and yarn structures with device design and how the design of actuators can fully embrace the properties. 

About funding

WeArAble - Soft wearables with high energy density: merging chemical biology and silicone chemistry with active compliant devices is funded by Novo Nordisk Fonden grant NNF22OC0071130.

The 48 million DKK grant was funded from the Challenge Programme 2022 - Energy materials with biological applications.

The grant period starts on 01 November 2022 and will last five years.

Objective

The aim of this project is to create a new design for silicone implants that cannot leak silicone into the surrounding body tissue. Additionally, the goal is to design an implant that closely mimics the consistency of natural breast tissue. This will help breast cancer patients to have a better quality of life after breast cancer, which the current implant design does not offer.

Background

Approximately 1 out of 4 breast reconstructed patients experience side effects within three years and will have to undergo further surgery; this may be due to the release of small amounts of silicone oil into the surrounding tissue, even in the absence of implant rupture. Moreover, the current implant design fails to replicate the softness and natural movement of breast tissue, resulting in many women experiencing a breast that feels and looks different from their natural breast tissue.

This highlights the necessity for a new silicone implant design, which we aim to achieve by synthesizing a single, large molecule, as opposed to using an implant shell containing leachable silicone oil.

Funding

The project is currently funded by Spin-outs Denmark.

Objective

The industrial PhD project aims at developing methods to recycle crosslinked elastomers.

Background

The producers of crosslinked elastomers are facing a significant challenge with regard to finding efficient recycling processes for their products. Although there are substantial developments in the field, the difficulty of regaining the original properties of the polymers remains an obstacle for larger industrial applications. This project aims to investigate how the diffusion properties of crosslinked elastomers can be utilized to recycle this complex class of materials.

The project

The project is funded by Roxtec International AB and will be running from 2023-2027.

Objective
This project aims to prepare a new type of industrially relevant silicone-based coating containing no or less solvent than the currently available coatings. 

Background
Large structures such as windmills and ships are covered with coatings to prolong their lifetime. Volatile organic solvents are added to make these industrial coating formulations sprayable and easier to apply on the structures. When the coating dries, these often harmful solvents evaporate and end up in the environment. More than 350,000 tons of organic solvents are annually released from ship coatings alone. 

The novel silicone-based coating with no or less solvent will consist of short cyclic silicone polymers with a low viscosity combined with long linear silicone polymers with a high viscosity. The short cyclic silicones will act as a solvent, decrease the viscosity of the mixture, and make it sprayable. When the linear silicones thread the cyclic silicones, the interaction between the two types of polymers will increase the viscosity again. This interaction between linear polymers and ring cyclic polymers can be utilized to make a coating where the viscosity can change without the need for adding solvents. 

The project
The main focus of this project is establishing procedures for preparing networks containing cyclic silicones. Furthermore, there will be a significant emphasis on analyzing the properties of the elastomers containing cyclic polymers to determine how these networks differ from classical networks consisting solely of linear polymers.

Funding 
The project is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and will run from 2022 to 2025.

Focus

We are developing an adaptive antimicrobial foam for chronic cavity wounds without antibiotics that delivers an optimal healing environment inside the wound bed.

Background

Globally, more than 50 million people are suffering from chronic wounds, and the number is steadily increasing, primarily driven by ageing populations and an increase in lifestyle-related diseases. The socio-economic impact of chronic wounds is significant. Treatment and care of these wounds account for >3% of the healthcare budget in developed countries, and the patients experience reduced quality of life, a high mortality rate, and risk of amputation.

The key to fast wound healing is eliminating wound exudate pooling and inhibiting bacterial growth.

The project

The foam consists of a silicone glycerol system, where the hydrophilic glycerol is dispersed within the hydrophobic silicone matrix, and it contains a combination of natural antimicrobial agents that do not cause issues with antimicrobial resistance. Due to the foam’s initial liquid state, its injection into the wound allows for full conformation to the shape of the wound, including fistulas. The foam is quickly formed with the same softness as the surrounding tissue, and the perfect fit together with the foam’s demonstrated absorption capacity leaves no room for exudate pooling. The proximity of the antimicrobial soft foam on all wound surfaces facilitates antimicrobial efficacy and promotes tissue growth. Upon removal from the wound, the foam retains the toxic exudate due to its closed-cell structures and is removed in one piece, even from irregular wounds.

Due to these antimicrobial foam features, the foam is in parallel considered for defence forces as a first aid multifunctional foam for acute wounds (non-arterial > 90%) that protects and controls the infection while the wounded soldier is en route to the field hospital. Besides inhibiting inflammation and infection, the foam seals the wound and prevents further contamination from the external environment, and encapsulates the fragments in the wound, which are removed together with the foam at the hospital.

A spin-out will be formed based on the foam technology and is expected to have a dual-use focus:

• First aid multifunctional foam for acute wounds, bridging the gap between battlefield and hospital
• 3D non-drug antimicrobial dressing for chronic wounds, eliminating exudate pooling in the wound and inhibiting bacterial growth

Funding

The project is funded by Innovation Foundation Denmark (2022 – 2023), (2025), DTU-POC (2024), SPARK Denmark (2024-2025), and Pioneer Innovator (NNF) (2024-2025).

Objective

The primary objective of this project is to create environmentally friendly silicone elastomers that degrade naturally and sustainably. These elastomers will be cross-linked by hydrogen bonds using both natural and model phenols as crosslinkers while maintaining their electro-mechanical properties. Additionally, the project aims to develop a viable recycling process for the produced materials.

Background

In conventional silicone elastomers, the polymer chains are crosslinked through strong covalent bonds, which significantly contribute to the material's structural strength and integrity. However, this covalent cross-linking poses challenges for recycling. Conversely, thermoplastic elastomers can achieve cross-linking through the incorporation of non-covalent bonds like hydrogen bonds, π-π associations, ionic linkages, or dynamic bonding interactions within the polymer structure. These non-covalent interactions enhance the material's thermal reprocessability, making thermoplastic elastomers more adaptable to reuse, repurposing, and recycling as they can be more readily broken down than covalent bonds. With increasing environmental and human health concerns due to plastic waste, recycling is becoming more important day by day. Recycling silicone waste can also mitigate the substantial energy consumption in converting sand into silicone.

The project

The project involves collaboration from McMaster University, Canada. The project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark and will run from 2023 to 2026.