Pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are polymeric materials of high interest and broad application due to unique visco-elastic behavior. It admits their application with light pressure, avoiding the usage of heat, solvent, or long curing time. Unique properties, such as very low glass-transition temperature, high tackiness, and easy bond formation with the substrate surface, make them so popular with a constantly growing demand in various industries. In this study, we target the combination of conventional petroleum-based monomers used for PSAs synthesis for decades with sustainable plant oil-based monomers (POBMs) developed in our research group. POBMs are derived from plant oils triglycerides via one step transesterification process and may possess a chemical on-demand composition related to plant oil chosen for synthesis. Incorporation of POBMs into the (co)polymer macromolecules enhances hydrophobicity, provides the effect of plasticization, and introduces reactive sites in the form of allyl double bonds for the post-polymerization formation of cross-linked networks. One of the conventional methods for PSAs synthesis is emulsion polymerization. Utilization of an aqueous medium permits a broad tunability in final material properties. To a large extent, the adhesive's performance is defined by the molecular weight of the chains and the cross-link density. Therefore, for polymer synthesis, we employed free radical emulsion polymerization with conventional thermal initiation and redox system to evaluate the effect of synthetic conditions on the material final properties. In this study, we address the correlation of POBMs content to the PSA polymer properties and its performance on paperboard and polymeric substrates commonly used in food packaging. It is shown that an increase of POBMs content up to 40 wt.% allows to achieve the desired adhesive performance on multiple substrates.

Pressure-sensitive adhesives with plant oil-based acrylic monomers for multisubstrate applications

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