Effect of Different Tackifiers on Emulsion-Based Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive (PSA)

This work was intended to investigate the effect of various tackifiers (terpene phenolic resin (TPR), rosin ester (RS), and pentaerythritol rosin ester (PERS)) on the main properties of a PSA such as tack, peel, and shear strength. In this experiment, the PSA based on butyl acrylate-vinyl acetate was synthesized. Various characters such as solid content, conversion percentage, viscosity, and particle size were evaluated. Different concentrations of tackifiers were added to the formulation. The results confirm that the RS may be most compatible with the synthesized PSA. In addition, using 7.5 wt % of RS shows a significant change in the tack of the PSA; however, RS causes a sharply declining peel strength from 0.42 to 0.1 N/mm, while by adding TPR (5 wt%) besides PERE (2.5 wt %), the peel strength reaches its maximum level of 1.3 and 1 N/mm, respectively. Surprisingly, increasing the number of tackifiers causes diminished shear strength.