Scientists Have Developed a Perfume to Make Your Sweat Smell Amazing

Impact

Rejoice, sudorous masses. A research team in Belfast, Ireland, developed a perfume that makes your sweat smell sweet.

Nimal Gunaratne and a team from the Queen's University Belfast Ionic Liquid Laboratories Research Center devised a perfume that releases more aroma when it comes in contact with moisture, specifically sweat.

How it works: The fragrance locks onto a scentless ionic liquid (that is, salt in liquid form) so that when it comes in contact with water, it activates, releasing the scent onto the user's skin.

It can also remove bad smells from sweat. All sweat comes with thiolic compounds, which smell sulphuric or onion-like and which is what you're actually smelling when someone stinks. Gunaratne's system makes the thiols attach to the ionic liquid and help curb the odor.

"This is an exciting breakthrough that uses newly discovered ionic liquid systems to release material in a controlled manner," Gunaratne said in a release from the research center. "Not only does it have great commercial potential, and could be used in perfumes and cosmetic creams, but it could also be used in others area of science, such as the slow release of certain substances of interest."

Sweaty success: This isn't the first time a lab has attempted to replace our smelly side with a more delicate fragrance. A few years ago, an Australian artist collaborated with a synthetic biology lab to create a swallowable perfume pill that would make your pores seep the fragrance. However, it's been pointed out that perfume pills probably wouldn't make it through your digestive system effectively enough to make much of a difference.

Queen's University Belfast

Compared to the pill approach, Gunaratne's perfume has the best fighting chance, and it could be applied to other areas of science — namely, ones that involve sulphur or more diabolical thiols.

Gunaratne didn't mention when the world would start seeing sweat-reactive perfume on corner store shelves, how much you'd need to put on to combat the stink coming from unaffected areas or whether his creation would make marathon runners smell as if they bathed in perfume like a nervous first date. But it could certainly be the answer to a plaguing international query: Can we kill Axe body spray yet?