ABSTRACT
Abstract-The work of adhesion of hydrophobizing agents of the type typically used for paper and board – alkenyl succinic anhydride (ASA) and alkyl ketene dimer (AKD) – as well as of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) to hydrophilic and hydrophobic model surfaces was studied. The work of adhesion was determined by contact angle measurements and also by a recently developed contact mechanics technique based on the JKR methodology. The results obtained by these different techniques were compared with each other and the correlation between the contact angle and the JKR methods was found to be good. Both the contact angle and the JKR approaches are applicable to determining adhesion to macroscopic surfaces and they also facilitate the investigation of many different materials, which makes them very practical in studying interactions that are of great interest in different applications related to papermaking.
