Feasibility of Processing Hot-Melt Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive (HMPSA) with Solvent in the Lab

Hot-melt pressure-sensitive adhesive (HMPSA) is an environmentally benign adhesive which is typically processed without solvent in industries. However, casting solution method is commonly used for experimental purposes in the lab for convenience. Therefore, seven types of solvent with different polarities, including toluene as the most commonly used solvent, were investigated in this work to study the feasibilities. Quick bond strength and holding power were tested with different types of solvents and different adhesive weight percent in the prepared solutions. Through viscosity measurement, thermal analysis, and compositional analysis, the correlation between the chosen solvents and adhesive performance was further explored. It was found that the differences in the obtained bond strength of HMPSA treated with a variety of solvents were due to physical reasons instead of chemical reactions, and a solvent with similar polarity to toluene (e.g., tetrachloride, octane) should be considered as an option because a similar polymer chain relaxation could be maintained as the original HMPSA without solvent treatment. In this study, the mechanism of choosing toluene as common solvent for HMPSA testing was analyzed, and the feasibility of optional solvents was discussed.