Glove tear or perforation is a common occurrence during various activities that require gloves to be worn, posing a significant risk to the wearer and possibly others. This is vitally important in a clinical environment and particularly during surgical procedures. When a glove perforation occurs (and is noticed), the glove must be replaced as soon as possible; however, it is not always noticeable. The present article is focused on the design and development of a novel fluorescence-based sensing mechanism, which is integrated within the glove topology, to help alert the wearer of a perforation in situ. We hypothesized that natural rubber gloves with curcumin infused would yield fluorescence when the glove is damaged, particularly when torn or punctured. The glove design is based on double-dipping between Natural Rubber Latex (NRL) and an inner layer of latex mixed with curcumin, which results in a notable bright yellow-green emission when exposed to UV light. Curcumin (Cur) is a phenolic chemical found primarily in turmeric that fluoresces yellowish-green at 525 nm. The tear region on the glove will glow, indicating the presence of a Cur coating/dipping layer beneath. NRL film is modified by dipping it in a Cur dispersion solution mixed with NRL for the second dipping layer. Using Cur as a filler in NRL also has the distinct advantage of allowing the glove to be made stronger by evenly distributing it throughout the rubber phase. Herein, the optimized design is fully characterized, including physicochemical (fluorescence emission) and mechanical (tensile and tear tests) properties, highlighting the clear potential of this novel and low-cost approach for in situ torn glove detection.

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Natural Rubber (NR) latex cleaning compound was prepared by using three types of NR latex; HA latex, waste latex and subnormal latex. Each of these NR latex is then compounded with two different cleaning agents; monoethanolamine (MEA) and diethylene glycol (DEG) at three different phr loading; 1, 3 and 5 phr. The mechanical properties of these compounds were also investigated. Cleaning efficiency was conducted by applying the NR latex cleaning compound on the dirty surfaces. From the results, NR latex compounded with MEA exhibit better mechanical properties at loading of 3 phr MEA. The cleaning efficiency also showed the ability of NR latex compound to clean the dirty surfaces with addition of cleaning agent especially at higher loading. The waste N R latex compound compounded with MEA shows the best result in cleaning the surfaces due to the presence of filler that can adsorbed the dirt on the surfaces.

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