Acrylic Pressure-Sensitive Adhesives Containing SiO₂ Nanoparticles

The use of acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) is increasing in a variety of industrial fields. They have been applied in the manufacture of mounting tapes, self-adhesive labels, protective films, masking tapes, splicing tapes, carrier-free tapes, sign and marking films, and in diverse medical products, such as pads or self-adhesive bioelectrodes. In this study, the application of SiO₂ nanoparticles in acrylic PSA was investigated. The properties of the newly synthesized and modified PSA were evaluated via the tack, peel adhesion, shear-strength and shrinkage. It has been found that the nanotechnologically-reinforced systems consisting of monodisperse non-agglomerated SiO₂ nanoparticles and self-crosslinked acrylic PSAs showed a great enhancement in tack, peel adhesion, shear resistance and shrinkage, without showing the disadvantages known to result from the use of other inorganic additives. In this paper we evaluate the performance of SiO₂ nanoparticles with a size of about 30 nm as inorganic filler into the synthesized solvent-borne acrylic PSA.