Pressure Sensitive Adhesive (PSA) Development

Appliqué coating, as paint replacement on aircraft surfaces, offers significant environmental benefits as well as performance and cost advantages. Pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are critical components of appliqué coatings; improvements in the thermal stability, chemical resistance and removability of PSAs are needed before appliqué films can realize their full potential as aircraft paint-replacement coatings. PSAs require a liquid-like flow under pressure to establish contact, and a high energy dissipation capacity for peel resistance. The need to balance these two features limits the thermal stability and chemical/weathering resistance of today’s PSAs. We have employed nanostructuring and hybridization principles to overcome this obstacle. Nanostructured PSAs employ the tremendous specific surface area and the nano-scale spacing of nanomaterials to realize improvements in energy dissipation, cohesive qualities, thermal stability, barrier attributes and chemical/weathering resistance. Hybrid pressure sensitive adhesives make complementary use of different PSA constituents, which retain their distinct qualities within a stabilized hybrid system, to meet demanding performance requirements at competitive cost. The Phase I project developed a cost-competitive class of hybrid/nanostructured PSAs which are stable over a broad temperature range, provide high levels of chemical/weathering resistance, and exhibit desired removability after aging for use with appliqué coatings on exterior aircraft surfaces. The proposed Phase II (and Phase II Option) efforts will develop scaled-up processing and control capabilities for high-volume, low-cost production of hybrid/nanostructured PSAs, their transition to appliqué films, and thorough characterization of the end product for use on aircraft surfaces.