Synthesis of novel pressure sensitive adhesives by emulsion polymerization technique

Acrylic based water dispersions are commonly employed in label adhesive industry as pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs). Although acrylic polymer dispersions have excellent chemical and UV resistance, they cannot fulfill the desired performance requirements of the market. Because of this reason, acrylic polymer dispersions are compounded with tackifier resin dispersions by the PSA producers. However this compounding process requires use of high performance mixers which costs a lot, and use of high amount of surfactant which causes whitening problem in label adhesives when in contact with water. In this study one pot emulsion polymerization technique in the presence of a tackifier was employed to synthesize acrylic based pressure sensitive adhesives for filmic label market which should in principle, eliminate the use of high cost mixers and high amounts of surfactant and thus solve whitening problem of the filmic labels.