UV Curing of a Pressure Sensitive Adhesive Coating Studied by Real-Time FTIR Spectroscopy And Laboratory Scale Curing Experiments

By Armin Tauber, Tom Scherzer, Ingeborg Weiß, Reiner Mehnert

Real-time FTIR spectroscopy was used to study the UV-light induced crosslinking of a pressure sensitive adhesive based on a saturated acrylic polymer bearing a photoreactive functional group in the side chain.

To simulate production parameters, e.g., cure speed and number of required UV lamps, single or multiple UV-light flash experiments were performed which have shown that the amount of crosslinked polymer chains in the adhesive depends on the applied UV dose.

The same result was observed by varying the intensity of the UV-light. The properties of the pressure sensitive adhesive, e.g., peel and shear strength, were determined by UV curing using a laboratory irradiation unit. These results were compared with those of the RTIR spectroscopy experiments.