Even with surface roughening, nickel-epoxy bonding may still be unsatisfactory. The RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy primer system is a nanoprimer solution that modifies surfaces, strengthening and creating more durable bonding between existing epoxies and alloy metals like nickels. Effective even on smooth surfaces, reinforced bonding is so strong that it is even able to withstand extreme temperature fluctuations from -40 to 125℃.
RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy primer performs well on tensile and lap-shear tests.
Due to its toughness, strength, resistance to corrosion and electrical conductivity, Nickel has diverse uses in various industries such as in food preparation equipment, consumer electronics, medical equipment, transport, construction and power generation. Therefore, as the RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy primer system greatly enhances nickel to epoxy adhesion, this boosts nickel usage in these industrial applications. Compared to non-modified samples, Nickel samples with RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy surface primer showcased great improvement in adhesion strength by up to 48%. The improvement in bonding was more obvious for smooth samples but higher stability overall was observed for rough samples as well. Read more about how our chemically clean and extremely thin RadiSurf adhesion solution is suitable for various industries.
Eliminate sandblasting – stronger bonding even on smooth surfaces
Smooth surfaces are known for weaker bonding to epoxies. With the RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy primer solution, the bonding strength of smooth samples showed significant improvements of 30 – 40%. Therefore, with the RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy surface modification, you can avoid sandblasting and mechanical preparation of metal surfaces yet achieve substantial improvements in metal-epoxy bonding.
For rough samples – metal-epoxy bonding stability increases
Since surface roughening improves epoxy-metal bonding originally, smaller increments in adhesion strength of roughened RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy modified samples were observed as compared to that of smooth samples. But there was also much less variation in results, thus demonstrating great improvements in bonding stability and consistency.
Maximum adhesion performance ensured
The RadiPrime™ metal-epoxy primer ensures epoxies reach its maximum adhesion performance by increasing bonding strength and stability between metal and epoxy, preventing them from separating before the maximum stress is reached.
Not only did the RadiPrime™ modified samples perform better overall, but they also had a much lower failure rate (e.g. the number of samples underperforming). Furthermore, the breakage occurred in the epoxy itself, showing it had reached its adhesion limit. For non-modified samples, clean fractures were observed – the glue was pulled clean off, indicating that metal-epoxy bonding is weak and the epoxy was torn away before reaching its full bonding strength.
Withstands extreme cold and hot temperature fluctuations
Samples modified with the RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy primer solution stood up to extreme temperature ranges from extreme cold to high heat. After undergoing 1020 times of repeated temperature cycling from -40 to 125℃, laminated samples that were pre-treated with the RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy modification showed little signs of delamination. This attests to how our RadiPrime™ Metal-Epoxy primer system is the ideal solution for automotive, performance electronics, oil and gas, power generation and other industries where such conditions are commonplace.
Stability of coated surfaces – production flexibility
The RadiPrime™ modification can be easily incorporated into manufacturing processes as modified surfaces are stable for months, allowing them to be stored before the final coating/ adhesion process.
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.