INTERACTIONS IN COLD-SEAL FLEXIBLE PACKAGING SYSTEMS

A series of aqueous oligomers has been developed and characterised wit h respect to their ability to act as cold-seal release agents. Charact erisation employed such techniques as inverse gas chromatography (IGC) , FTIR (ATR), adhesive bond strength testing and differential scanning calorimetry. Titrimetry was usefully employed in the characterisation of the oligomers as a method of functional group quantification. Auto mated IGC can successfully be applied to this type of system provided care is taken to establish standards and control conditions. Following the guidelines provided by IGC and FTIR, it has been shown that it is possible by subtle modification of the chemical nature to alter the a dhesive nature of film-forming oligomers. The level of chemical modifi cation has proven to be a significant ''knife-edge'' factor in determi ning the adhesive properties of the oligomeric film formers.