USE OF LUCOFIN® 1400MN AND LUCOFIN® 1494M IN EXTRUSION COATING APPLICATIONS

Extrusion coating and extrusion lamination have found wide-spread industrial and commercial applications. They are used for decorating, protecting goods,… and add different functionali-ties to their substrates enhancing the overall product features.

LDPE is the most commonly used polymer in extrusion coating and extrusion lamination. However, the use of polar copolymers is increasing significantly. Among the polar copolymers ethylenebutylacrylate (EBA) and ethylenevinylacetate (EVA) are most often used here.

In comparison to LDPE and EVA, EBA exhibits a lower heat sealing temperature, improved hot tack and seal through contamination.

In addition, EBA shows better adhesion to a wider range of substrates especially more polar ones such as polyesters or polyamides. LDPE exhibits good adhesion only towards kraft paper, and only weak adhesion towards all other substrates. In contrast, Lucofin® 1400MN (EBA) shows excellent adhesion to all respective sub-strates outperforming LDPE as well as EVA.

In extrusion coating and extrusion lamination, a limiting factor is the maximum processing temperature determining the production output: The higher this temperature is also the adhesion improves. Since EBAs withstand temperatures up to 300 °C, they also outperform EVAs on this metric as well since EVAs are only suitable without decomposition into corrosive degradation products up to 200 °C. EBAs adhesive characteristics improve even more when polar substrates are to be used especially PA, PET, EVOH, PC and aluminum. In certain high polar specialty applications, our Lucofin® 1492M HG may be the product of choice.

Lucofin® 1492M HG is a maleic anhydride (MAh) grafted version of Lucofin® 1400 MN. The MAh grafting is accomplished through an reactive extrusion process that incorporates MAh into EBA rendering the final product even more polar that the EBA starting material. Consequently, blending Lucofin® 1492M HG with other polar products – even in low to moderate concentrations – may significantly improve adhesion properties.