Scaling properties of contact area of pressure-sensitive adhesives

Two new devices were developed to provide accurate measurements of both the contact area and the tack strength of pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs). The first one is the "mechano-optical tack tester" (MOTT), which was designed to apply controlled contact pressure by means of a quartz prism probe, for determined contact times, onto the surfaces of PSA samples. The contact area is measured by the reflection of light at the quartz probe surface, which is in contact with the adhesive. The second device is an "acoustic contact tester" (ACT) that measures the tack strength and the contact area between a silicate glass and an adhesive by the reflection of an acoustic wave. Two ultrasonic sensors of different acoustic wavelengths have been built in order to study the scaling effects of the contact kinetics between an adhesive and the probe. MOTT and ACT experiments on a commercial PSA show that the contact area is the main parameter that governs the tack properties of the PSA. The experiments and the modeling point out that the contact area depends on the compression stress, the roughness, the thickness, and the Young's modulus of the PSA. However, comparison of contact kinetics from MOTT and ACT experiments show that the contact area is a subjective parameter that depends on the wavelength of the reflected beam used for its measurement.