About Our Label and Tag Products and Materials

At Polyonics, we engineer and design a variety of materials and specialty coated films for label and tag products and tapes. These products meet and exceed your specific needs when operating in harsh environments is a requirement.

About The Topcoats For Labels And Tags

Topcoats are Polyonics' specialty; we are coating experts. Our distinctive and unique topcoats are designed to withstand harsh environments and add critical functionality to our products. Our gloss and matte finish topcoats comply with REACH and RoHS initiatives, meet appropriate ASTM, PSTC and select Mil standards, and are UL recognized.

Polyonics offers a wide variety of topcoats designed to provide ideal printing surfaces for labels and printed electronics. In addition, the topcoats can withstand high temperatures, harsh cleaners and solvents typical of the PCB manufacturing process. Polyonics also offers static dissipative topcoats for labels and tags that help protect your static sensitive devices.

The topcoats used for label and tag products that serve the metal manufacturing and foundry markets provide excellent abrasion resistance, barcode readability at extreme temperatures, and coatings that won’t degrade during long-term exposure to elevated temperatures, chemicals, UV and weather.

Polyonics provides customized solutions for specialty coating and specialized coated films.

About The Films

Films are a very important part of Polyonics products. The film portion of the construction determines the material’s overall physical properties including tensile strength, thermal resistance, UV resistance, chemical and electrical resistances, thermal conductivity, surface roughness, dimensional stability, stiffness, and ease of die cutting. Depending on the application, and the specific film used, it can account for up to 70% of the overall product cost.

We select films for our products that are designed to survive tough environments such as very high temperatures and exposure to the harshest chemicals. Polyimide (PI), polyester (PET) and aluminum (AL) are the most popular materials used in Polyonics products. However, we do manufacture products that use nylong, polyethlylene naphthalate (PEN) and polyetherimide (PEI).

PI is the primary film used for Polyonics products due to its superior performance in harsh environments. Polyimide remains dimensionally stable at temperatures up to 500 °C (1000 °F) and resists prolonged exposure to chemicals typical to the PCB manufacturing process. PI is a highly rated flame-retardant material.

About The Adhesives

Selecting the proper adhesive is essential to the success of the label/tape in each application. Polyonics’ adhesives are formulated to withstand harsh chemical and solvent attacks in the most hostile process conditions. A wide variety of acrylic adhesives are available, in different thicknesses, to achieve a wide range of tack, sheer and peel properties. Labels/tapes exposed to temperatures higher than acrylic adhesives can tolerate will need silicone adhesives ‘to do the job’. Silicone adhesives are also used whenever a label must adhere to a low energy, rough or porous product surface. Silicone adhesives provide higher temperature and solvent resistance over acrylic adhesives, but they are a more expensive option.

We also have adhesives available for specific applications which require flame retardant, removable, or thermally conductive properties.

About The Release Liners

The base layer of all Polyonics label/tape materials is the release liner. Its primary function is to protect the acrylic or silicone pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) until the label or tape is ready to be applied. The liner also helps in material handling, determines the ease of removal from the PSA and is a critical element in the die cut process. The liner is comprised of a carrier; paper, polyester (PET) or fluorinated PET, and an ultra-thin layer of silicone. The release value is dependent on the application requirements.

Our standard liners:

• 50# SCK (Super Calendared Kraft): 3.2 mils +/-0 .3 mils. Due to its high internal strength this liner withstands all conventional die cut operations. The 50# SCK liner is used for all our acrylic-based tape products and on our 2 mil label materials.
• 55# Glassine: 3.03 mils +/- 0.27 mils. This liner is denser than the 50# SCK liners, providing a harder and thinner base for die-cutting.
• PET: 1.5mil +/- 0.15 mils. This is a clear silicone coated PET film with extremely high internal strength, low heat shrinkage, excellent stiffness, high clarity and surface smoothness. It is often used in auto-apply applications when 50# SCK and 55# glassine don’t perform well or when the automatic applicator requires a clear liner for label sensing.
• 20# Fluorinated PET liner: 2mil +/- 0.20 mils. This liner is used for all silicone PSA label/tape applications.