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HIGH THROUGHPUT TESTING OF ADHESIVES

Christopher Lester, Sr. Scientist
William B. Griffith, Sr. Scientist

Rohm and Haas Company, Spring House, PA

Companies are continually looking to improve productivity and reduce costs. Consequently, most organizations carefully examine their processes, streamline them, and remove bottlenecks wherever possible. Often the result is a better organized version of the original process. Conversely, overstreamlining can also cause less actual data to be collected and cause materials to not be fully optimized. The challenge is how to conduct more developmental work with less effort.

In the development or qualification of a pressure sensitive tape, most of us follow a very traditional process. Formulations are blended, draw downs are prepared, and various PSTC test methods are used to decide which adhesive and/or construction will meet a need. In the end, data are usually tabulated in a spread sheet form, and by inspection, a candidate sample is selected. Over the years, this process has been scrutinized repeatedly to improve its optimization. Recently, some have started to consider alternate means that could potentially reduce the effort required to develop a new tape through the use of high throughput methods.