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SDEX Shared Design Experience

PSA Adhesion Strength Characterization

Project Overview

Project Background:

Microsoft has burgeoned since its start in 1975. From the beginning to the present, Microsoft’s mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.  The Hardware divisions, such as Surface and Xbox, within Microsoft deliver the key entertainment and productivity experiences that span gaming, music, office and video across multiple screens. These business groups drive development and marketing of these products and services, and maintain high quality standards for our customers.

Currently, to maintain their competitive advantage in the market they are using advanced materials and assemblies processes.   More so, they are using thinner and lighter components.    As such, one of their key strategies is to develop processes that can allow rework of their components and enable reuse to reduce costs.  Part of managing this change is understanding adhesive properties in a way that allows their meaningful adaptations in engineering.

As such, the goal of this project is to understand how varying the surface energy of commonly used substrates affects the bonding strength with adhesives and materials commonly used by Microsoft.  Microsoft currently bond components together using PSA’s.  PSA bond strength can be greatly affected by surface energy of bonding substrates.  There are multiple ways to improve surface energy bonding substrates.

Project Objectives:

  • Develop a test vehicle that:
    • Has the ability to perform pushout testing of PSA test coupons up to 2500N.
    • Is able to provide force readouts from pushout testing
  • Design a glass coupon that:
    • Has a rigid body to isolate variability due to deformation
    • Has the ability to validate uniformity of bond
  • Design a test puck that:
    • That is compatible with test vehicle pushout equipment
    • Performs as a bonding surface for PSA die cut
    • Has the ability to be produced in multiple materials
  • Gather experiment results form experiment design, including:
    • Contact angle of bonding surfaces, this is impacted by surface preperation, cleanliness, bonding surface material, PSA material, die cut design
    • Output of force vs. displacement and pushout strength vs. contact angle curves, to understand failure modes and forces
    • Adhesion characterization of strength vs. contact angle
  • Other Requirements:
    • Consistently prepare bonding between all experiments
      • Uniformity, pressure, heat, time, etc.
    • Determine failure force of coupons
    • Test coupon design
    • Design press
    • Test architecture and design

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