Adhesive Tape Research Paper

Adhesive Tape

Adhesion is the activity or procedure of sticking to a surface or question, with it’s most practical application being adhesive tape. Adhesive tape is used everywhere and everyday, in offices, homes etc. But a question that may seem trivial at first but once broken down can be very complex is “What exactly makes adhesive tape stick?”. Sticky tape is simply tape however the underside (in some cases both sides) is covered with a substance that when in contact with a surface will tie to that surface and oppose division.

Adhesive tape is also known as Pressure-sensitive tape (PSA tape), the reason for this is because adhesive tape sticks when pressure is applied to it in comparison to some tapes that need water or heat to activate

But also in saying so adjust very quick depending on what stress rate it is experiencing. When being applied to a surface, which is associated with low shear rate, they must flow (bond to the surface) and when they are being peeled (high shear rate) they must respond elastically as is to say it should resist separation. For a PSA operate well, it ought to have great adhesion to a surface and great cohesion. For exceptional adhesion, it is imperative that the adhesive can easily flow out. The degree, or freeness, of the stream frequently decides the power of bond. Degree of flow relies on the difference between the surface energy of the material and the surface energy of the adhesion. PSAs tend to flow out on materials with a high surface energy - for example, glass, plastics and metals. PSAs tend not to flow out as effectively on low surface-vitality materials, for example, teflon, polyethylene and Teflon.

A question which may be posed is how can one choose between different adhesives ensuring that we find one that suits our requirement or how can we improve the formulation to make one that is suitable . The main function of an adhesive, as mentioned before, is bonding and resisting debonding from whatever surface it is attached to. So an adhesive would be chosen based on this fact.

The quality of adhesion is based on properties known as tack, peel, which was briefly touched on previously, &

For example, the peel resistance at 0°C would be significantly lower than the peel resistance at 22°C (room temperature). So in terms of controlling the peel strength of an adhesive, one can vary the temperature between the temperature of the adhesive and Tg.

When examining the graph to the left note that the “% liquid” refers to the tackier which as you can see has a bearing on the other two properties. So an increase in tackifier will reduce the shear strength as expected & at a point will also reduce the peel strength.

We have now discussed PSA’s the ‘sticky’ part of adhesive and choosing/formulating an adhesive suitable for its intended use.

We will now look at the future of adhesive tape.

Adhesives are used in many different areas where you may not even think. It has become popular in the automobile industry to replace welds and screws, which in some cases make cars much lighter and thus more efficient. The business sector for adhesives in the construction sector is estimated to draw near to $8.63 billion by 2019, this is simply because of quickly expanding countries who have major construction projects underway. Adhesive tape & adhesives in general will continue to expand as long as surfaces need binding together which will probably be for a long, long