Texture Evaluation of Soft Foods - Probe Tack Test of Adhesive Tape

Introduction

Adhesive tapes and sheets are produced for many industrial fields and have a wide range of applications. Diverse types of adhesive tape are used every day, for example, in manufacturing smartphones, in constructing furniture in the housing and construction industries, and in bundling cables in the automotive industry. Particularly in the medical field, adhesive tapes are used in adhesive skin patches (transdermal patches) and materials for covering wounds. Transdermal patches are a minimally-invasive method for delivering drugs through the skin, and are a comparatively safe drug administration method, since administration can be stopped easily, simply by removing the patch. The characteristics of quick adhesion and high workability make the application of such products necessary in many fields. The properties required in adhesives include its adhesive force when applied to an object, the durability of adhesion during use, the force necessary to remove the product, and the re-adhesion property in case the initial application is incorrect and it is necessary to reapply the product. As the methods of evaluation for these properties, the Japanese Pharmacopoeia 17th Edition provides several methods of adhesion testing, including peel adhesion testing, inclined ball tack testing, rolling ball tack testing, and probe tack testing. This article introduces an example of tests conforming to the probe tack test method, which enables testing of samples with small adhesive surface areas, such as adhesive plaster, using a Shimadzu EZTest™ compact tabletop testing machine.

March 31, 2021 GMT