Thermosetting acrylic adhesives are rubber-toughened systems that cure rapidly at room temperature to provide a crosslinked structural adhesive suitable for bonding metals, engineering plastics, and many other substrates with minimal surface preparation. They provide a high tensile shear and peel strength, chemical resistance, and impact strength.
Thermosetting acrylic adhesives can be applied as standard two component meter-mix-and-dispense systems, the base component can be applied to one substrate and an activating primer to the other, or one component can be applied to one substrate and the second component to the other. These various methods of joining along with the capability for providing cure times ranging from very short to relatively long provide significant production advantages in assembly operations.
RESULTING PROPERTIES
The composition of the original DuPont second-generation acrylic is shown in Table 3. The cure of acrylic adhesives is initiated by a two-part redox reaction system. One component of the redox reaction is present in the base component of the adhesive, and the second component is present in the accelerator or “curing” component. Various tougheners have been used in thermosetting acrylic adhesives. A very common toughener is chlorosulphonated polyethylene (Hypalon, from DuPont-Dow).
