Silicone & Medical

U.S. Medical Glove Company (USMGC) is the world’s first end-to-end manufacturer of nitrile and polyisoprene surgical and exam gloves, headquartered in its 1.8 million-square-foot facility in Harvard, IL. USMGC oversees on American soil every stage of production—from raw materials, to machine manufacturing, to deploying AI technology in the development of its proprietary ERP, to the distribution of the final products.

The soft electrodes developed by Klas Tybrandt’s research group at Linköping University are stretchable to follow the body’s movements without damaging tissue. They consist of extremely thin threads of gold and soft silicone rubber. “The classical conductors used in electronics are metals, which are very hard and rigid. The mechanical properties of the nervous system are more reminiscent of soft jelly. In order to get an accurate signal transmission, we need to get very close to the nerve fibers in question, but as the body is constantly in motion, achieving close contact between something that is hard and something that is soft and fragile becomes a problem”, says Klas Tybrandt, professor of materials science at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University, who led the research.

EPFL researchers are targeting the next generation of soft actuators and robots with an elastomer-based ink for 3D printing objects with locally changing mechanical properties, eliminating the need for cumbersome mechanical joints.