Temperature resistance of polyimide films and tapes

Cus­tomers often ask us what the tem­per­a­ture resis­tance is of our poly­imide tapes and films. Though this is a very nor­mal ques­tion to ask, it’s not as sim­ple to answer. Tem­per­a­ture resis­tance of any prod­uct is made up of the tem­per­a­ture resis­tance of each of its parts. Even the con­cept of “tem­per­a­ture resis­tance” leaves a lot open to inter­pre­ta­tion. So in order to answer the ques­tion of tem­per­a­ture resis­tance of poly­imide tapes, we need to answer each in turn.

How do we define the temperature resistance of polyimide tapes?

When a poly­imide tape is exposed to high­er tem­per­a­tures, two things hap­pen. The first is that the poly­imide back­ing itself gets warmer and the sec­ond is that adhe­sive strength degrades. If your appli­ca­tion requires your poly­imide tape to have high adhe­sion at cer­tain high­er tem­per­a­tures, then this is how you should define the upper oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture. If once the tape is applied to the object, the adhe­sive strength is no longer impor­tant, but the poly­imide film itself is not allowed to burn, then this should be your def­i­n­i­tion of poly­imide tape tem­per­a­ture resistance.

What is the temperature resistance of each element of the polyimide tape?

The poly­imide film itself can be exposed to tem­per­a­tures up to 400°C with­out any risk of burn­ing or mechan­i­cal degra­da­tion. The adhe­sive lay­er attached to the poly­imide tape is often either acrylic or sil­i­cone. Acrylic starts to lose much of its adhe­sive strength above 100°C, where­as sil­i­cone adhe­sive starts to lose much of its adhe­sive strength above 260°C.

If your appli­ca­tion is such that the part can be exposed to these tem­per­a­tures for only short peri­ods of time (say 3–10 min­utes), then the ques­tion is whether the tape itself actu­al­ly sees these tem­per­a­tures. Expo­sure to high tem­per­a­tures does­n’t mean nec­es­sar­i­ly that the poly­imide tape itself will get that hot, and once the heat is removed, then much of the adhe­sion loss of the adhe­sive is regained.

Of course, you should test for your­self if the poly­imide tape meets your spe­cif­ic tem­per­a­ture require­ments, but hope­ful­ly this arti­cle gives you the con­fi­dence you need to test it for yourself.

Vis­it caplinq.com to learn more about both our Poly­imide films with­out adhe­sive, or our Poly­imide tapes with acrylic or sil­i­cone adhe­sive. You can also con­tact us if you have fur­ther ques­tions on the tem­per­a­ture resis­tance of poly­imide tapes and films.

About Chris Perabo

Chris is an energetic and enthusiastic engineer and entrepreneur. He is always interested in taking highly technical subjects and distilling these to their essence so that even the layman can understand. He loves to get into the technical details of an issue and then understand how it can be useful for specific customers and applications. Chris is currently the Director of Business Development at CAPLINQ.

2 thoughts on “Temperature resistance of polyimide films and tapes

  1. Hi, I have a ques­tion, I’m work­ing with wires that are insu­lat­ed with kap­ton tape and I need to degrade de insu­la­tion so I can sol­der in my cir­cuit, Is there any quim­i­cal or heat solu­tion for this? We are doing it man­u­al with a cut­ting pli­ers and very care­ful­ly but the wire is get­ting affected.

    Thanks and regards.

  2. One of our appli­ca­tion engi­neers men­tioned the poten­tial use of MEK (MethylEthylKe­tone) as a rel­a­tive­ly cheap aggres­sive sol­vent for the removal of cured plas­tics. It could be an option to try out. It is, how­ev­er, a nasty sol­vent to work with, espe­cial­ly at ele­vat­ed tem­per­a­tures, but it could work.

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