Method for Locally Measuring Strength of a Polymer-Inorganic Interface During Cure and Aging

Achieving strong and durable polymer adhesion to inorganic substrates under various environmental conditions is challenging. The required long-term durability tests are over long time- and length-scales, beyond the capability of current modeling, and extensive experimental testing is needed. Currently, no commercially available method exists for monitoring how a polymer/substrate system evolves during cure at scales large enough to reflect bulk characteristics of the cross-linking system and small enough to be tractable and still capture interface failures. Such a local method, arguably between tens to low hundreds of micrometers, has the potential for dramatically facilitating development efforts attempting to optimize substrate/polymer adhesion. SurForce LLC proposes to leverage its experience using, designing and manufacturing Surfaces Forces Apparatus (SFA) Systems to develop a technique to measure the interface quality in substrate/polymer systems during curing from prior-to gel-point conversion to fully-cured. The sensitivity of the SFA technique to surface properties changes has the potential to provide insight into basic polymer adhesion science and shorten the life-time testing. Our research partner, the Israelachvili lab at UCSB, adds expertise and capability in the broad area of the surface sciences including polymer/substrate adhesion with unique insight and design expertise in friction, adhesion and measurement systems.