How to Ensure Effective Adhesion of Silicone Sealant?

Silicone sealant has bonding performance as its most basic and important feature in practical use. It relates to the durability of sealing and even the safety of building components, requiring a good adhesive force produced by the interaction between the sealant and the adherence material. How to ensure effective bonding of silicone sealant?

Choose the appropriate silicone sealant

Since the invention of silicone sealant caulk, after nearly 80 years of development, there are many types of silicone sealant caulk; when choosing sealant, the compatibility of sealant and substrate should be given priority. It is necessary to select appropriate sealant based on the different substrates. Some adhesives react with substrates and corrode them, while some substrates avoid silicone adhesives and cannot produce adhesion.

When choosing a silicone sealant, it’s imperative to consider the product's specifications and suitability for the intended surface. This decision-making process is crucial to ensure a durable and effective seal. To aid in this selection, turning to a seasoned silicone sealant manufacturer like ZHONGTIAN EAST can make all the difference. With a comprehensive range of silicone sealant caulks developed for various substrates, ZHONGTIAN EAST provides solutions that cater to the unique requirements of different projects. Whether you're working with glass, metal, plastic, or any other material, finding a silicone sealant that ensures strong adhesion and long-lasting performance is key.

Clean substrate surface is crucial for silicone sealant

The existence of dust and dirt would reduce the contact area between the adhesive and the substrate surface, resulting in stress concentration under force and causing premature damage to the sealant; oil pollution may cause dissolution and failure of the sealant; rain, snow and frost may prevent the sealant from bonding. Therefore, clean the substrate as much as possible before bonding to ensure its cleanliness and dryness, making silicone sealant caulk fully adhered.

Apply primer before silicone sealant is needed

Usually, silicone mastic sealant has good adhesion to metal, but with the progress of technology, various surface treatments for aluminum profiles emerge, even the same kind of building aluminum profiles produced by different manufacturers have obvious differences in adhesion due to different technology or production control levels. Don't panic when encountering this situation. At a critical moment, primer appears. Primers, also known as bottom paints, are composed of different solvents and coupling agents, which have certain cleaning ability for aluminum profiles, and coupling agents play a role in modifying the surface of profiles, thereby enhancing the adhesive force between sealant and profiles.

Reasonably set silicone sealant joint

When applying sealant, besides the width and depth of the sealant, it is more important to avoid three-sided bonding, because three-sided bonding will seriously affect the displacement capability of the sealant, resulting in excessive internal stress and cracking.

Silicone sealant for immersion in water environment is not allowed

Although the solidification of silicone mastic sealant cannot do without water participation, due to the structural composition, it cannot be immersed in water for a long time, because long-term immersion will dissolve and extract the sealant components, change the composition structure of the sealant, and its performance will inevitably decrease.

Protect silicone sealant before it completely solidifies

Regardless of any sealing agent, it is very fragile before it is completely solidified, and its durability and weather resistance are very strong after it is completely solidified, and various excellent performance can be fully utilized. Therefore, during the bonding to completely solidified period, try to avoid the sealant from being subjected to stress.