With just 5μm, it is significantly thinner than a single hair, heat-resistant up to 500° C and so strong that with just a few strips you may lift a small car: Adhesive tapes are true superheroes and all-rounders. In their current campaign, tesa – the international manufacturer of innovative adhesive tapes and self-adhesive system solutions – has collected the most exciting facts and possible uses of tesa products, with amazing results.
If at the mention of tesa you immediately think of the popular tesafilm, you will be surprised at how diverse the company's more than 7,000 adhesive solutions actually are. Only 300 of them are classic end customer products, while the lion's share of tesa innovations includes special applications that have been specifically developed for industry and commerce. For example, a modern smartphone may contain up to 70 mostly double-sided tesa adhesive tapes. The smallest is nearly 5-μm thin and thus 20 times finer than a hair. Another tape with 30 N/mm2 offers enormous adhesive power on the smallest surfaces and is installed on the backside of many smartphones under the camera lens with a width of only 0.4 mm. The same adhesive tape, for example, also holds the chip on EC cards securely and firmly in place.
For the production of these special adhesive tapes tesa often takes unconventional steps. To manufacture Optically Clear Adhesives (OCA), tesa has installed clean room units at its plant in Hamburg-Hausbruch, as well as in Suzhou, China (since 2021). The air in these rooms is 100 times cleaner than on a mountain peak. The result: highly transparent, wafer-thin films that are used, among other things, for display bonding in smartphones.
Up to 130 adhesive tapes in a single car
In the automotive industry too, especially in the manufacture of e-cars, the trend goes towards ever smaller and lighter products. Hundreds of high-precision applications are already used successfully, and many more are already in the development process. For example, tesa pads cover the hundreds of holes that are necessary in a car body for the dip painting process or important assembly work. Laser-printed labels that can handle more than 1,600 hours at up to 150° C and are resistant to chemicals and abrasion serve as reliable protection against counterfeiting. The most striking application areas also include the permanent bonding of cells in electric batteries and the insulation of electronic components. The special product tesa® FireGuard withstands flames of up to 500° C for six minutes, protecting the passenger compartment in the event of a battery fire in an electric car.
"Flying Splices" for the printing industry and film processing
Even in the printing industry, adhesive tapes today simplify many work procedures and make processes more efficient. With a product like tesa EasySplice®, you may change roles on the fly. Even at a speed of 1,000 meters per minute, there are no more web breaks. A real winner, especially for the flexographic printing industry, where materials with non-polar surfaces are often used.
"The world of adhesives is diverse and sophisticated. For a long time, adhesive tapes have been playing to their strengths in many industries, and in the future, they will continue to be used in ever more sectors. The flexible handling and the fast adhesive effect accelerate many processes and thus enable optimized production and an improvement of the final product. Together with our customers, we persistently work on new ideas, product sustainability and sophisticated system solutions in our global Solutions Centers and continue to expand our assortments," says Frank Kolmorgen, Board Member Industry at tesa SE.
