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Description
In the conventional description, peeling of an adhesive from a solid substrate is expressed in terms of adhesion energies at adhesive-substrate interfaces. However, this energy-based perspective faced considerable difficulties in explaining why the adhesion energy, also known as peel strength Γp, is many orders of magnitude greater than Dupré’s thermodynamic work of adhesion, Γ0. In this study, we present experimental evidence to demonstrate that polymer adhesion is governed by interfacial strength σinterf, defined by the pair of adhesive and substrate. A tensile adhesion test is performed to estimate σinterf from adhesion strength σadh equal to the engineering stress at detachment. This test stretches, at various rates under different temperatures, one end of a ribbon-like specimen with the other end adhered to the same substrate used in peeling tests until adhesive detachment. The dependence of σadh on applied rate and temperature is found to be the same as that of Γp from conventional peeling tests on peeling speed vp and temperature. Our stress perspective shows that Γp explicitly correlates with σadh through a characteristic length scale P instead of Γ0. Here, P is the distance from the peeling front, beyond which the adhesive undergoes little deformation. Since P is a much larger length scale than a molecular scale and σadh directly depends on polymer–substrate interfacial interactions, Γp explicitly depends on σinterf. As activated processes, in both peeling and tensile adhesion tests, interfacial debonding on shorter time scales and lower temperature required higher interfacial stress.
Publisher name
American Chemical Society
Grant Information
N/A
Data Management
N/A
Document Type
Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Link
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.6c02054
Publication Date
6-18-2026
Publication Title
Langmuir
Volume
42
Issue
26
First Page
199108
Last Page
19117
Recommended Citation
Wang, Shi-Qing; Fan, Zehao; Pang, Tianji; and Cui, Zhe, "Adhesion depends on interfacial strength: time and temperature effects" (2026). University Research. 61.
https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/university_research/61
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.