(132a) Adhesion Forces Apparatus: A Flexible System for Novel Adhesive Materials Testing.

The surface forces apparatus, SFA, is very sensitive to measuring interfacial forces in the range of micro and millinewtons with films confined to the order of nanometer thicknesses. However, when testing novel adhesive materials the forces to be measured are much greater, tens to hundreds of millinewtons and beyond. To understand how a glue responds in an environment closer to its real world application the material must be allowed to form a bulk material with distances on a micrometer scale becoming more important during separation. The adhesion forces apparatus described here is designed on similar principles to the SFA with modifications to the distance measurement method and using strain gauges for the force detection in order to make the apparatus more ideally suited to the testing of novel adhesives. A number of different sample geometries have also been developed to enable flexibility in the testing of adhesive materials in different forms not just between two fixed surfaces but also, for example, using a tweezer system to test pre-cured adhesive plugs.