Hot Melt Pressure Sensitive Adhesives
What are Hot Melt Pressure Sensitive Adhesives?
Hot Melt Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (HMPSA) are formulated with three primary raw materials: polymers, resins, and plasticizers. Polymers are the backbone and provide cohesive or internal strength. Resins tacky the polymer, plasticizers enable effective wet-out and lower the viscosity for coating. Heat and shear blend these materials in specific amounts to achieve the end-use properties needed for each application.
Pressure-sensitive adhesives are frequently used as sealing tapes or as self-adhesive labels. They behave differently from standard adhesives, as the adhesive layer should stay "liquid" until the tape or label is applied to the required surface.
What are the Benefits of Hot Melt Pressure Sensitive Adhesives?
Among the many advantages brought by HMPSA, we can mention the following features:
- Low VOC and compatibility with bio-based raw materials.
- Exceptional tack capabilities.
- Systems can be designed to display pressure sensitivity for applications like labeling, allowing the solid adhesive to form bonds with minimal force.
- Enable significantly faster setup times than solvent-based, water-based, and curable adhesive systems, making them a staple within high-speed manufacturing processes, such as automotive assembly.
- Well suited for cold temperature applications and maintaining adhesion in high humidity conditions.
- Adhere to the most challenging substrates.
- It can be tailored to possess lower tack where stickiness of an adhesive is undesirable, for example, with porous nonwovens.
What are Bostik's sustainable innovations about HMPSA?
For which applications HMPSA are designed?
Self-adhesive tapes
Hot Melt Pressure Sensitive Adhesives are widely used in tapes. You can find HMPSA adhesives for the following applications:
Automotive
Compatible with many complex automotive substrates, our spray and roll-coated Hot Melts reduce wastage and drying time. The rapid and precise application of Bostik Hot Melts makes them a staple within high-speed manufacturing processes. Bostik HMPSA is used mainly in automotive tapes and labels such as:
Flexible Packaging
Bostik offers a complete range of high-performance and innovative, flexible packaging solutions to meet your storage, transportation, marketing, and production needs and encourages the development of sustainable packaging. Our HMPSA systems are used for sustainable re-sealable food packaging.
Nonwovens
Hot Melt Pressure Sensitive Adhesives are mainly used in nonwoven. Nonwoven fabrics have long been able to take on the fabric's appearance, texture, and solidity. Now that technologies are improving, manufacturers have added softness to those essential qualities. The materials used to formulate nonwovens products are the key to softness. Discover our adhesives for:
Frequently Asked Questions about HMPSA
How are Hot Melt Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (HMPSA) applied for tapes & label?
Typically HMPSA is transfer coated from the release liner to the face stock to achieve the smoothest surface on the adhesive for bonding. Slot die is the most common type of coating method used with HMPSA. Roll coating or gravure printing may be used to pattern coat Hot Melts.
How to prevent degradation of HMPSA?
Hot Melt adhesives will degrade with extended time at elevated temperatures when the line is not running. Degradation can negatively affect the appearance, processability, and performance of an HMPSA. To prevent producing PSA labels or tapes out of specification, it's important to control the temperature of the melt tank, hose, and coating head during equipment-related downtime.
HMPSA products
HM 2110
TLH 2549 E
