I-Corps: Roadmap to Commercialization of Electrospun Polymer Adhesives

所提出的技术有望提供一种自清洁、可重复使用和可重新连接的粘合剂产品和技术。它可以用作脚趾垫，手套，胶带或其他新颖的应用。商用压敏胶粘剂由粘性聚合物层组成，并与表面凸起紧密接触。该团队在他们的实验室中证明了纤维粘合剂可以表现出与商业粘合剂相似的粘合性能，但具有自清洁能力。提出的任务旨在促进建立一个新的业务，重点是开发粘合剂使用电纺聚合物微和纳米纤维。如果成功，该项目将刺激下一代胶粘剂的商业化活动，这些胶粘剂可以模拟自然发生的现象，并具有合成的柔性等价物。该团队将对产品进行原型设计，并为后续投资研究商业模式。拟议的团队建设、研究和创造财富的活动将在制造科学、材料物理学和昆虫学学科之间建立联系，该团队将补充PI在材料开发方面的努力。该团队已经确定了十几个可能对拟议产品感兴趣的潜在合作伙伴，而I-Corps的努力将支持与这些潜在合作伙伴进行商业可行性调查。

The proposed technology holds the promise of delivering an adhesive product and technology that is self-cleaning, re-usable and re-attachable. It can be used as toe pads, gloves, tapes or other novel applications. Commercial pressure-sensitive adhesives consist of a sticky polymeric layer and make intimate contact with surface asperities. This team demonstrated in their laboratory fibrous adhesives can exhibit similar adhesion property to commercial adhesives, but with self-cleaning capability. The proposed tasks aim to catalyze the establishment of a new business that focuses on developing adhesives using electrospun polymer micro- and nano-fibers. If successful, this project will spur commercialization activities for the next-generation adhesives emulating naturally occurring phenomena with synthetic flexible equivalents.The team will prototype products and investigate a business model for subsequent investment. The proposed activities in team building, research and wealth creation will forge links among manufacturing science, materials physics and entomological disciplines and the team will complement the PI's efforts in materials development. The team has identified over a dozen potential partners that may be interested in the proposed products and this I-Corps effort will support the investigation of the commercial viability with many of these potential partners.