Study of the effect of the environmental relative humidity on the angle dependent peeling strength of pressure sensitive adhesives (PSA).

摘要

The use of adhesives, especially pressure sensitive adhesives (PSA), has relevance in many industrial, medical and commercial applications such as automotive, aerospace, biomedical and electronics.;A number of characterization techniques have been used with the main purpose of understanding the performance of PSA by quantifying material properties, such as peeling strength. The peeling strength is dependent on the composition, viscoelastic properties of the adhesive, and its measurement provides information regarding stickiness and reversibility on different substrates.;The work of Kendall and Gent explained the dependence of peeling force on peeling angle, work of adhesion and the modulus of the adhesive tape. Although the measurement of peeling strength has been widely studied, few experiments have explored the effect of humidity and temperature on peel strength.;In this work we have used the Kendall approach to evaluate the effect of humidity on the peel strength of PSA at constant temperature (23°C). Our results confirm the expected angle dependence of the peel strength, being considerably superior when small angles were tested.;Furthermore, our results indicate that the peel strength is reduced with increased humidity. Understanding the influence of humidity on adhesion will help provide insight to the humidity response of biological adhesives used by spiders and geckos.