Micromechanisms of Tack of Soft Adhesives Based on Styrenic Block Copolymers

Abstract

The tackiness of model soft adhesive layers based on styrene-isoprene-styrene block copolymers and a tackifying resin were investigated with a flat-ended cylindrical steel probe. The contact between the probe and the adhesive was maintained for 1 s at a nominal pressure of 1 MPa before being detached at a constant velocity. The effect of resin content, probe velocity during debonding and temperature were systematically investigated. Failure was initiated by two main mechanisms: an interfacial cavitation at low debonding rates, giving relatively low adhesion energies, and a bulk cavitation process at higher debonding rates, which gave much higher adhesion energies. In both cases failure occurred at the end by interfacial detachment of fibrils. The characteristic probe velocity where the transition between these two mechanisms took place was controlled primarily by the linear viscoelastic properties of the adhesives. However, the important quantitative parameters obtained from a tack test, i.e., the maximum debonding stress and the adhesion energy, could not be predicted by the linear viscoelastic properties of these adhesives alone.