Transparent face mask startup inhales $1M seed round
The product can be made in bulk and formed into mask shapes much like typical cloth, however there is the matter of spinning up making for it. Thankfully, the world is desperate for masks, and the idea of a transparent one was clearly catnip for investors. HMCARE easily raised a million-franc seed round, the R&D work having been done utilizing not-for-profit donations and grants.
There were technically transparent masks readily available, however they were just regular masks with a plastic window in them, which can fog up and isn’t breathable. Thierry Pelet, now CEO of the company, approached his EPFL colleagues with a model of a transparent mask material satisfying the rigorous demands of a medical environment. It must permit air through but not bacteria or viruses, and so on.
(Update: Fixed essential missing out on decimal point in “$1.05 million.”)
While the HelloMasks could release as early as the start of 2021, they’ll be mostly for the medical neighborhood, though public availability is certainly a possibility.
The creators were inspired by healthcare workers in the 2015 Ebola break out and at children’s hospitals worldwide working carefully with clients however unable to show their faces. Parents and family members of immunocompromised people who must make a human connection with two-thirds of their face covered.
A Swiss startup called HMCARE, drew out of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, has actually raised a million Swiss Francs (equivalent to about $1.05 million) to commercialize its fairly environment-friendly and transparent surgical masks.
The group worked with Swiss materials center Empa to develop a new type of textile. Using biomass-derived transparent fibers positioned 100 nanometers apart to form sheets and then triple-layered, they made a flexible, breathable material that’s likewise almost transparent– a bit like gently frosted glass. They call it the HelloMask.