Fastening, bonding, joining, and mounting of materials is done in a number of ways. For example, materials used in industrial applications and building materials used in homes and offices are increasingly bonded using adhesive solutions. These replace more traditional fastening methods, such as screws, bolts, rivets and even welding. The reasons that adhesives are making such inroads into these applications are manifold: Adhesive tapes, for example, are flexible, light, and easy to position or even reposition and are largely immune to mechanical impact. They are widely used in the automobile-, electronic-, and paper industries, among professional builders and by do-it-yourself handymen or -women. Adhesive solutions are as varied as the applications they are used for. In many industries, it is critically important to know the composition of the adhesive material used since it can greatly influence the quality of the final product. This information can also be used to identify cheap imitations that can negatively impact revenues and ruin the reputation of a quality brand.
A typical adhesive tape consists of a carrier film, an anchor coating and the adhesive material. If it is a double-sided tape, one side is typically protected with a separating film, called a liner. Depending on the application, different types of liners can be used, such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) or polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Carrier films can be made of PE, PP, PET, or of soft or hard poly vinyl chloride (PVC). In addition, various additives are used to tailor material properties to the specific application. These include plasticizers added to produce, for example, soft PVC, anti-aging agents, or anti-blocking agents. The adhesive material is typically produced from polyacrylate, synthetic caoutchouc, or natural caoutchouc, all of which may contain one or more of the following: Adhesive resin, fillers, crosslinking agents, and/or plasticizers. As an example, a double sided tape may be based on a soft PVC carrier with a resinous polyacrylate adhesive layer on both sides coated with a PE film.