Toagosei Annual R&D Report “TREND” – Issue No. 8

ARON MELT PES is a saturated copolyester hot melt adhesive for IC cards, developed as an IC card adhesive film and laminate adhesive for contactless cards and smart cards. In a typical contactless IC card, the adhesive film bonds a PET, PETG, PVC, or polycarbonate surface layer to a circuit board layer carrying an antenna coil and IC chip. Its gap-filling ability follows uneven IC-chip and circuit surfaces while maintaining card durability. The series provides plastic and metal bonding, including adhesion to PET, PVC, PC, aluminum, copper, and iron, making it suitable for plastic-to-metal constructions and IC-chip module fixing.

This polyester hot melt adhesive is supplied as pellets and films for heat bonding; a solution type supports thin-film coating. The environmentally friendly, solvent-free hot melt adhesive film forms a uniform adhesive layer without a drying process and supports heat-roll lamination or hot pressing. Grades are tailored to card design: PES-111EE for non-embossed PET cards, PES-111EHW to suppress adhesive outflow, PES-070EW for lower-temperature card lamination, PES-XP715 and PES-XP727 for embossed PETG, PVC, and PETG/PC cards, and PES-070IC for short-time bonding of IC-chip modules. PES-070IC bonded heat-resistant PETG to an FR4 board at 180°C for one second and showed no burring during die cutting.

For electrical insulation adhesive film applications, PES-111EE showed volume resistivity of 2 × 10^14 Ω·cm, surface resistivity of 2 × 10^15 Ω, and dielectric strength of 50 kV/mm; measured ionic impurities were below detection limits. It also retained adhesion after 1,000 hours at 80°C/90% RH, chemical exposure, and 300 thermal-shock cycles. Embossed-card grades achieved an emboss height of 0.45 mm with card warping of 2.1 mm or less. This combination of cohesive and flexible resin properties, high insulation resistance, dielectric strength, chemical resistance, damp-heat durability, and card-lamination workability supports use as a contactless IC card adhesive, smart card adhesive, copper/aluminum bonding film, and IC-chip module adhesive.