MOBILE PHONE

Tackifier
The adhesive is not made by melting rubber. A special material is added to the melted rubber so that it is adhesive. This material is called tackifier. Rubber is a high molecular substance of which the molecular weight is normally several tens of thousands up to several million, whereas the tackifiers are made of materials in which the molecular weight is mostly several hundreds up to 3 or 4 thousand. Most tackifiers are made of compound materials. They are, sometimes, made of pine resin.

Curing agent
This is usually called a curing agent or cross linking agent. It is used mainly to minimize the symptoms that the adhesive sticks to the work-piece by making the linear particles link with each other in a cross-linking formation.

Solvent
This is an organic solvent that melts the rubber. The rubber is not melted by the solvent but it turns soft in the solvent, so that it looks melted. We usually use Toluene. We, however, use ethyl acetate (EA) to make the acrylic adhesive.

Anticorrosive and AntioxidantCore
When the adhesive is exposed to sunlight, heat or oxygen, it chemically reacts and is oxidized.
When it is oxidized, its rubber molecule chains are cut from each other and it hardens or becomes sticky.

Core
This is used to finally roll the tape. It is like a spool.
Usually, its size is 3 inches (76~77mm) at diameter. Sometimes, 5 inches or 6 inches are also used.
It is usually made of paper. It can also be made of plastic to minimize alien matter.

After being coated, a tape of so-called ‘Jumbo Roll’ is made. This is a big roll which rolls the film coated with adhesive as a whole.
This roll is normally 1.5m wide and 6000m long although its size is subject to change depending on the machine. This is cut to sell. The size, 50mm x 50m, that you usually see is the Korean standard size.
This jumbo roll is unrolled and re-rolled to meet every specified size in a machine mounted with many blades.
The interval of such blades makes the size of the tape.
After being cut by the blades the tape is cut into small sized tapes and then rolled in required sizes on the core.

The adhesive tape adheres to various kinds of surfaces including cellophane film.
We coat the back of the film with a release agent so that the tape can be unrolled easily.
The release agent does not directly affect the character of the tape, but it is a very important component of the tape.
Without release agent treatment, we may not be able to use the adhesive tape.
The release agent treatment helps the user not only to easily unroll the tape but also to effectively cut the tape during the 2nd working process.

Adhesive tape is coated with adhesive on its clean and dried surface so that it can be adhered with little pressure.
It can be used in water, organic containers and in heat. It is coated with adhesive on its thin and soft material, and it stays adhered at room temperature.
This type of tape can be coated with adhesive on one side (one-sided adhesive tape) or both sides (double-sided adhesive tape).

Yes, it is possible. The back-side of the adhesive side is treated with a release-coating so that the tape can be unrolled easily. Such release-coating treatment is done usually with wax or silicon. It is possible to prevent static electricity if the back-side is treated with antistatic agent also while being treated with release-coating.
In addition, the anti-static agent may be used while manufacturing the film itself.
This method is not used frequently because it is expensive.

This is very common. This usually happens while using a product made of thin film.
Most transparent tapes typically used in Korea are made of OPP film.
It is one of features of such OPP film to tear if scratched even a little bit.
If it is scratched on its surface by the blade used to cut the tape roll in various sizes, it may tear in a certain direction when it is pressed to be unrolled.

Let me take an example with rubber-based adhesive that is usually used.
First of all, cut a lump of rubber in a thin plate form. During this cutting process, the milling process is also done in order to control the molecular weight of the rubber needed for the adhesive and to make it soluble.
After this process, melt the rubber in a big processing tank of 5~10 ton using organic solvent, usually Toluene with various tackifiers and additives for about 24 hours. After all these processes set forth above, you will see a sticky adhesive.