Structural adhesive tapes –
an alternative to traditional adhesives?
Quick overview
- Structural adhesive tapes provide strong, load-bearing bonds between materials such as metal, composites, plastic, glass, and rubber while offering a cleaner alternative to liquid structural adhesives.
- They simplify manufacturing by eliminating mixing, curing, clamping, and overflow challenges associated with liquid adhesive systems.
- The tapes deliver outstanding bonding performance, chemical resistance, impact resistance, and resistance to temperature and humidity.
- Typical applications include automotive powertrains, electronics assembly, display mounting, component mounting, and smart card manufacturing.
Structural adhesives form bonds that can support loads and bear stress. As such, they are popular in the engineering sector to bond different materials such as metal, composites, and plastic. Structural adhesives can also improve manufacturing processes as they are easier and quicker to apply compared to installing fasteners or creating welds.
However, in their liquid form, structural adhesives have their limitations. They create processing challenges as they transgress bond lines and provide uneven coverage after curing. Structural adhesives turn relatively straightforward bonding into complex, time-heavy processes as they require clamping and fixing until the adhesive bond is set.
This is where structural adhesive tapes come to excel, offering more freedom of design, high ease of use, and safer processing.
Why choose structural adhesive tape?
Depending on the requirements of your application, structural adhesive tapes can represent a more efficient solution while still forming strong, reliable bonds between different substrates. Liquid structural adhesives require mixing, curing, and clamping. By contrast, structural tapes are simple to apply, withstand harsh environments, and are cleaner to use, with no dripping or overflow. Structural tapes also have the advantage of providing uniform thickness throughout the joint.
Typical applications of our structural adhesive tapes
At tesa, our structural tape solutions are widely used in the automotive industry for powertrain applications that demand extreme temperature and chemical resistance. Generally, structural adhesive tapes can reduce weight, improve performance, and enhance aesthetics.
In the electronics sector, they provide outstanding resistance against chemicals, impacts, temperature, and humidity. Typical applications include component and frame mounting, FPC bonding and stiffening, as well as bonding of soft goods and accessories.
In addition, structural adhesive tapes can be used for permanent bonding of chip modules into the cavity of substrates, which is crucial for all smart card manufacturers to ensure the cards function properly in daily applications.
Structural bonding solutions for demanding industrial assemblies
Best for: Structural adhesive tapes are designed for applications requiring strong, reliable bonds that can withstand mechanical stress and demanding environmental conditions. They support industrial manufacturing processes by providing an efficient alternative to liquid structural adhesives and traditional fastening methods.
Why they perform
- Outstanding bonding performance
- Resistance to temperature and humidity
- High impact resistance
- Chemical-resistant performance
- Uniform bond-line thickness
- Clean and easy application process
Typical applications
- Display mounting
- Component mounting
- FPC bonding and stiffening
- Permanent bonding of chip modules
- Mounting in automotive powertrains
Performance takeaway: Structural adhesive tapes combine high bonding strength, process efficiency, and environmental resistance for demanding industrial bonding applications.
Discover our structural adhesive tape portfolio
Our structural adhesive tape solutions provide high structural bonding performance to a wide variety of substrates, such as rigid plastic, glass, metal, rubber, and other low porosity substrates. They can be die-cut into intricate shapes to facilitate the adhesive bonding of complex parts. They withstand the harshest conditions by combining outstanding chemical and aging resistance.
The choice of our structural adhesive tapes covers:
Find the right structural adhesive solution for your project
