Novel, Solvent Free Hot Melt Adhesives for NBR Adhesion

Platamid, a copolyamide from Arkema, is typically used as a hot melt adhesive in a number of different markets including automotive and textiles. It can be utilized as an adhesive without the use of solvents, which makes it attractive from an environmental perspective.  In new findings, the use of Platamid has been found to enhance adhesion in NBR rubber compounds either in situ or as a secondary process, where a film of Platamid could be used as a thin adhesive layer between two pieces of rubber. This can also be used for rubber-thermoplastic and rubber-metal types of systems.   Advantages of Platamid compared to either solvent-based adhesives or using dissolved rubber as the adhesive include no solvents and significantly better interfacial adhesion.  The effect of acrylonitrile content was also discussed in which the effectiveness of Platamid decreases as acrylonitrile decreases.  In situ studies of Platamid/NBR blends showed that Platamid had very little effect on the mechanical properties (compared to the baseline NBR) such as tensile strength and tear resistance.