Experimental study on toughening UV pre-curing adhesives for electrically conductive applications

Epoxy adhesives are not conductive materials, usually requiring the use of fillers to create electrical bridging between the joint's substrates. This work aims at the implementation of UV fixation, instead of clamping jigs, on doped joints to ensure enough contact bridging pressure during curing. As such, an UV pre-curable adhesive was mechanically characterised in terms of strength – bulk tensile test and TAST (shear) –, and fracture toughness – DCB (mode I) and ENF (mode II) tests –, in the neat state (reference). Afterwards, for the doped configurations – 5%v/v conductive spheres (Sph), 15%v/v aluminium (Al) and 10%v/v graphite (C) – only mode I and II tests were considered accessing the filler's toughening effect. The electrical conductivity of the real joints was assessed through electric discharge machining (EDM). In the end, the Sph's were deemed necessary for bond thickness control. And the Al (mode I +50 % and II +61 %) and C (mode I +25 % and II +42 %) powders presented improvements in toughening the adhesive. However, UV-fixation failed to provide enough clamping pressure, during curing, to maintain the electrical bridging necessary for EDM.