Thermal management technologies for skin interfaces | Materials

Thermal management technologies for skin interfaces

Household & personal care Tech improvement

Background
What we're looking for
What we can offer you
Who we are
Q&A

Have questions about this request?

Get them answered by the team at Kimberly-Clark.

Background

We are committed to delivering comfortable single-use absorbent hygiene products that support skin health and help manage the temperature and moisture conditions at the skin interface. The diaper microclimate can become warm and humid during wear, particularly after fluid insult and when airflow and evaporation are limited. A cooler, better-regulated microclimate may improve comfort and support a more skin-friendly product experience.

Thermal comfort can be influenced through several mechanisms, including vapor and air transport, contact conduction, endothermic dissolution, latent-heat buffering, evaporative structures, and reduction of heat generated within the absorbent core. Some of these approaches may be combined, while others involve trade-offs with softness, rewet, breathability, cost, or converting complexity.

Technologies with a strong technical foundation and a clear pathway toward development could help translate these thermal-management approaches beyond laboratory demonstrations and into safe, manufacturable, and commercially relevant diaper solutions.

What we're looking for

We are looking for materials, formulations, structures, components, or process technologies that reduce thermal burden at the diaper-skin interface or improve thermal regulation during use, while maintaining the core performance expected of a disposable diaper. Solutions may act in the topsheet, acquisition/distribution layer (ADL), absorbent core, backsheet, cuffs, waist regions, or through a change in diaper architecture. We are particularly interested in concepts that can demonstrate a meaningful benefit under representative wet, humid, and clothed-use conditions rather than only under dry or bare-skin laboratory tests.

Solutions of interest include:

Components (e.g., contact-cooling topsheets, heat-spreading inserts, breathable backsheets, or thermally active ADLs)
Formulations, such as endothermic dissolution cooling systems (approximately 1–3 °C of cooling)
Materials (e.g., phase-change, thermally conductive, or moisture-responsive materials)
Structures (e.g., porous, spacer, hydrogel, evaporative, wicking, or liquid-redistribution layers)
Process technologies that airflow pathways or thermal functionality
Diaper architectures, such as layer configurations, ventilation pathways, or zoned designs that increase vapor and air transport

Our must-have requirements are:

Demonstrated or credible potential to reduce skin-interface temperature, heat flux, or thermal discomfort in a finished diaper under representative wet and humid conditions, beyond only transient cool-touch effects
Compatible with disposable diaper construction and material integration processes, including topsheet, ADL, core, backsheet, cuff, and adhesive interfaces as applicable
Safe and appropriate for intended skin contact or proximity, with a pathway for toxicology, migration, pH, odor, preservative, microbial-stability, flammability, and regulatory evaluation as applicable
Preliminary understanding of commercial viability, ideally including expected material cost, capital needs, and major cost sensitivities

Our nice-to-have's are:

A credible manufacturing and scale-up pathway, including converting-line impact, web-speed considerations, required equipment, quality controls, and performance after compression, packing, and storage
Can be combined with other thermo-comfort mechanisms, particularly transport, endothermic, and source-side heat-reduction approaches
Can be implemented through existing equipment or a low-capital retrofit, including cold application through existing adhesive or coating heads where appropriate
Provides a sustained or repeatable benefit across the wear cycle rather than a short-lived first-touch effect
Low carbon footprint, bio-based content, cost-neutral economics, or applicability across multiple absorbent hygiene formats

What's out of scope:

Solutions that compromise softness, drape, fit, leakage containment, fluid acquisition, retention, rewet, absorbent capacity, or breathability
Concepts that cannot preserve target leakage, absorption, rewet, softness, fit, or skin-contact requirements in finished-product testing
Cooling claims supported only by dry-fabric Q-max or bare, unclothed simulated-skin results without a plan to address wet, clothed, or swaddled use conditions
Materials or formulations with unresolved infant-skin safety, migration, microbial, odor, pH, flammability, or regulatory concerns
Concepts for which the required add-on, equipment, line-speed limitation, or supply-chain dependency makes the proposed use case commercially implausible

Acceptable technology readiness levels (TRL):

Levels 4-9