Aluminium is a challenging metal to adhere with epoxy glues. By modifying Aluminium surfaces with the RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy Primer System, Aluminium-epoxy adhesion performance is greatly enhanced while ensuring tighter adhesion. The highly stable surface coatings can be applied in a 2-step process, with an automated process being developed, this primer system is optimized for scaled-up production.
RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy surface primer on aluminum shows stronger adhesion performance
Aluminum is a lightweight yet strong, corrosion-resistant, durable and malleable metal. Therefore, it is extremely useful in fields like transportation, construction, and electronics. However, Aluminium is known for its weak mechanical bonding with epoxies, and this is highly problematic. The RadiPrime™ Metal-epoxy primer system is a nanometer-thin solution specially designed to greatly improve adhesion between epoxy and aluminum, ultimately improving bonding with aluminum – critical for such applications.
As can be seen from the graph, the adhesion strength of modified Aluminium samples increased by 21%.
Maximum epoxy adhesion performance reached
The RadiPrime™ modified samples reached maximum epoxy adhesion performance, as they mostly achieved a partially cohesive failure. This means the failure occurred at the epoxy itself while the epoxy was still very much bonded to the metal surface. Meanwhile, the non-modified samples often showed adhesive failure at the joint (glue was ripped clean off, showing the weak bonding between the epoxy and the metal surface).
Industrial scale-up feasible & automated process underway
The RadiPrime™ metal-epoxy primer showed highly consistent results of improving bonding. Furthermore, the primer application can be completed in only two-steps, making it easy for our RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy solution to be used in larger-scale industrial production. RadiSurf is currently working on the development of an automated process for large-scale productions.
How RadiPrime™ works
The RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy are engineered adhesive polymer brushes that are secured to the metal surface through almost unbreakable chemical bonds. This enables the epoxy to achieve chemical entanglement with the anchored polymer brushes. This velcro-like nanostructure drastically strengthens and stabilizes the metal and epoxy bonding, as it is an additional type of bonding that reinforces the weaker physical bonding by the epoxy.