Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (PSA) also commonly named as “tapes” are of common use, either by being applied definitively on spacecraft structures, or temporarily, for instance to ease the assembly and integration processes (e.g. fixing, masking, marking). Benefiting of their ease of manipulation and versatility, the tapes are used in many situations. However, PSAs can easily leave residues and contaminate surfaces directly or by cross-effects. In addition, in most of the cases, PSAs are suffering from a poor aging resistance and can quickly evolve in time. To reduce these risks of stability, silicone-based tapes are considered in many situations. Unfortunately, silicone is a type of contamination source that is undesired because it is difficult to mitigate.

In the scope of this work, commercial rubber-based and silicone-based tapes were compared at regular intervals during more than 130 days. Accelerated aging experiments were also performed by varying the temperature parameter and the combination of temperature and humidity. The peel forces at 180 ° were measured, the samples inspected, and the contamination levels investigated. The adhesive layer resistance upon contact with solvent was also tested.

Results show that silicone-based PSA adhesives require a higher force to be peeled-off, have a higher environmental stability than rubber-based PSAs and leave less residues on aluminium substrates after a certain period. On the other, rubber-based PSA may leave fewer residues during the first days of applications in comparison to silicone-based, besides the contamination layer is easier to identify and clean while its adhesive layer is more resistant.

It is reminded to the readers that PSA tapes properties is a very complex, multidisciplinary topic, dependent on many factors such as tapes' characteristics, substrates' characteristics and the application and environmental conditions. It is highly recommended to test and qualify any new use case or modification of processes with PSAs.