Does adhesive tape
stick to every material?

The fact that some substrates can be bonded easily and others
almost not at all is no coincidence, but has a physical explanation.
Adhesives require a wettable surface in order to establish full-surface
contact. Whether this is successful depends heavily on the surface energy of the material.

Adhesion is not a material property of the adhesive,
but rather an interaction between the adhesive system
and the substrate energy.

• Metals, glass, ceramics:
  typically high surface energy
  -> Can be bonded with standard adhesives/standard tapes

• Rubber, foams, painted surfaces:
  medium complexity
  -> adhesive, but sensitive to process fluctuations

• PE, PP, POM, PTFE, silicone:
  Often low surface energy (< 30–35 mN/m)
  -> Cannot be securely bonded without pre-treatment/special structure
   

A simple yes/no answer to the question of adhesiveness formally answers the question: ‘Is this material fundamentally adhesive or not?’ — but it does not answer how adhesive it is or under what conditions.

The correct interpretation is therefore:

This differentiation is crucial — not for the laboratory, but for economic decisions. Because:

• If a ‘difficult’ substrate is treated as ‘adhesive’, this results in massive follow-up costs

• If an ‘adhesive’ substrate is unnecessarily overtreated, this results in unnecessary process costs

A reliable bonding process is therefore not only a question of technical feasibility, but always also a cost decision.

In development projects, a lot of time is often spent on selecting the adhesive – while the substrate remains unchanged. This focus is strategically wrong and causes hidden costs in three areas:

Rework & complaints = feasibility
Incorrectly bonded components must be reworked or replaced
— often only becoming apparent late in the process.

Process uncertainty as a risk factor
A bond that only holds ‘under good circumstances’ is
a cost risk in series production.

Wrong decisions in material purchasing
If series materials are selected without checking their
bondability, expensive changes are inevitable later on.
 

The technically correct sequence is therefore not:
‘Which adhesive is suitable for my component?’ but rather: 

1. First classify the substrate

2. Select the adhesive system

3. Define the process.

This sequence minimises project durations, validation loops
and quality fluctuations.

The classification into ‘adhesive’ and ‘non-adhesive without further measures’ is not just a semantic category – it determines whether
a process can be operated stably or not.

Materials that are considered ‘adhesive’  
usually benefit from the pure combination of

• suitable adhesive technology
  (e.g. acrylate, rubber, silicone, depending on the application)

• a clean, grease-free surface

• defined pressure

Nothing more is required. Errors here tend to arise from process discipline (e.g. assembly at too low a temperature,
lack of pressure, contaminated parts) rather than from the material itself.

Materials that cannot be bonded without special measures

With these substrates, the main problem is not the choice of adhesive, but the surface physics. Without additional steps such as:

• Surface activation (corona, plasma, flame)

• Primer / bonding agent

• Mechanical roughening

• Silicone remover / decoating

reliable adhesion cannot be achieved.
Simply using a ‘better tape’ will not solve the problem in these cases.