Preparation and properties of environment-friendly acrylic latex laminating adhesives applied in plastic/plastic composite films

Abstract

Acrylic latex laminating adhesives (ALLAs) were successfully prepared via a monomer-starved seeded semi-continuous emulsion polymerization with butyl acrylate (BA), methyl methacrylate (MMA), styrene (St), acrylamide (Am), and methacrylate glycidyl ether (GMA) as monomers. Impacts of GMA on the final latex, the dried latex films and the adhesive properties of ALLAs were investigated, respectively. The results indicated that the increase of GMA contents in the pre-emulsion feed has no apparent effect on the final latex average particle size and size distribution, while the gel contents, glass transition temperature (Tg) and water contact angle of the ALLAs gradually increased, and the molecular weight (Mn, Mw) obviously increased. Additionally, as the amount of GMA increased from 0 to 10 wt%, the maximum peel strength of the composite films reached 3.72 N/15mm with 5 wt% GMA contents. When heated to 65 °C, the peel strength of the composite films with 5 wt% of GMA can still maintain an acceptable peel strength (2.51 N/15mm) for application, showing excellent adhesive performance and heat resistance properties.