Kaila White

The Republic | azcentral.com

Shengxi Chen has created a condom that he says should feel like nothing at all.

Or at least that's the hope, once the condom reaches human trials. Chen, an assistant research professor and biochemist at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, has made a few in his Tempe lab and believes they'll work perfectly.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation challenged researchers in 2013 and 2014 to develop a new kind of condom that maintains or even enhances pleasure and sensation. Chen is one of 22 applicants who were awarded $100,000 to make it happen.

He proposed to create a condom that mimics human skin, making it feel more natural.

Once he gets funding to make and test more, the condoms could be available for human testing in six months, he said.

The problem: Loss of pleasure

Although condoms prevent unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, "around the world only 5 percent of men wear them," the New York Times reported in 2013.

About 15 percent of women ages 15 to 44 use condoms, according to a National Center for Health Statistics report last November. The pill and female sterilization are the leading methods of birth control, followed by condoms.

"Loss of sensation, either real or perceived, is one of the main reasons men prefer not to wear condoms during intercourse," according to a post on the Gates Foundation's website, which calls wearing a condom akin to "taking a shower with a raincoat on."

Chen's solution: It's all about water

Most condoms repel water. That's the opposite of human skin, which loves and contains a lot of water, making condoms feel unnatural, Chen said.

Chen added materials to latex to create condoms that are eight times more water-loving than natural latex condoms, as well as stronger and more flexible, according to his tests.

It feels smoother and softer, and it's proven under a microscope: Water flows into the material opposed to sitting in a ball on top, and the texture appears smoother than most condoms, he said.

"People ask me, they want to use the product, they want to try it and I say, 'Currently, I cannot do that,' " Chen said.

No one has tried the condoms during sex yet because that would be illegal — the product must first pass safety and performance tests required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Chen's next step is to obtain funding to produce the condom commercially and to run the human testing.

"Everything at the beginning is hard, and I think ... after people try that and more and more people use and like that, I think the market is big. It just needs time," he said.