Applications and Types of PCB Glue

RAYMING PCB & ASSEMBLY
Applications and Types of PCB Glue

Gluing is an important process used in PCB fabrication and assembly for
functions ranging from laminate bonding to strain relief. Selecting the
proper adhesive or glue for the application helps ensure strong, reliable
mechanical connections on printed circuit boards. This article provides an
overview of the key uses of PCB glue as well as glue material properties
and common glue types.
Table of Contents
PCB Gluing Applications
Glue serves a variety of roles in PCB manufacturing:
 Laminate bonding – Bonds layers of fibreglass in multilayer PCBs
 Component attach – Glues components
like resistors or capacitors to the PCB
 Wire tacking – Temporary bonding of wires before soldering
 Strain relief – Reinforces soldered connections against
vibration/shock
 Edge bonding – Bonds the edge of flex PCB layers
 Masking – Protective coating over components or traces
 Thermal interface – Glues heat sinks to devices
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Choosing a PCB glue optimized for the specific application ensures the
adhesive meets required performance criteria.
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Glue Material Properties
PCB glues exhibit a range of material characteristics that determine their
suitability for particular applications:
Bond Strength
 Shear strength – Ability to withstand lateral force
 Tensile strength – Withstand pulling/stretching force
 Impact resistance – Absorb sudden impacts without breaking bond
Cure Process

 Room temperature cure – Cures through oxidation at room
temperature
 UV light cure – Cures quickly under UV exposure
 Heat cure – Cures at elevated temperature
Thermal Properties
 Operating temperature range
 Glass transition temperature
 Coefficient of thermal expansion
 Thermal conductivity
Electrical Properties
 Dielectric strength – Resists electrical breakdown under voltage
 Volume resistivity – Resists conduction of electricity
 Dielectric constant – Ability to store charge in an electric field
Outgassing – Release of gaseous vapors during cure. Important for
aerospace applications.
Reworkability – Ability to detach/rework bonds for repair needs
PCB Glue Types
Here are some of the common adhesive types used in PCB fabrication and
assembly.
Epoxy
Epoxies are the primary adhesives used to laminate multilayer PCBs. They
cure through a chemical reaction between epoxide resin and a curative
hardener. Key properties:
 Exceptional bond strength and temperature resistance
 Low outgassing and high dielectric strength
 Long working life for easier application
Epoxies come in a variety of formulations tuned for flexibility, thermal
shock resistance, etc.
Acrylic
Acrylic adhesives cure through exposure to ultraviolet radiation. They are
often used for component attachment on the PCB surface. Benefits
include:
 Cure rapidly under UV light
 Room temperature storage before curing
 Good dielectric and thermal properties
Cyanoacrylate
Cyanoacrylates, or super glues, are fast-curing adhesives used for wire
tacking and temporary bonding during assembly. Properties:

 Extremely rapid room temperature cure
 Low viscosity for wicking into joints
 Ability to cure with minimal moisture
 High shear and impact strength
CA glues provide quick, strong, temporary bonds.
Silicone
Silicone adhesives cure at room temperature through reaction with
moisture in the air. Applications include:
 Flexible strain relief for cables or connectors
 Thermal insulation or heat transfer
 Edge bonding of conformal electronics
 Masking sensitive components on the PCB
Silicones provide good flexibility, dielectric strength, and thermal
conductivity.
Urethane
Urethane adhesives cure with moisture at room temperature. They are
used when flexibility is needed:
 Bonding rigid and flexible circuits
 Absorbing vibration, shock, and stress

 Edge sealing flexible PCBs
 Adhering metal component tabs
Urethanes have good impact and chemical resistance.
Selecting a PCB Glue
Factors to consider when selecting an appropriate PCB glue include:
Strength – Tensile, shear, impact needs
Flexibility – Rigid or flexible cured bond
Temperature Range – Max operating temperature
Cure Process – Heat, UV, room temperature
Dielectric Properties – Dielectric strength, resistance
Conductivity – Thermal and/or electrical
Chemical Resistance – Solvent, moisture, etc.
Outgassing – For vacuum or aerospace environments
Reworkability – May need temporary or removable bond
Discuss application requirements with glue suppliers to identify the best
adhesive product fit.

PCB Glue Application Methods
Common methods for applying PCB glues include:
 Dispensing – Depositing precise dots or lines through needles
 Screen Printing – Using a stencil to print adhesive
 Roller Coating – Rolling a thin adhesive film onto bonding surfaces
 Spraying – Aerosol spraying in open or controlled environments
 Brushing – Manual application with brushes
Automated precision dispensing or printing ensures consistency and
minimizes waste.
Quality Control
To achieve reliable, consistent bonds, PCB gluing processes require
controls including:

 Testing bond strength of each batch with destructive tests
 Monitoring adhesive viscosity, especially for dispensed dots
 Keeping cold storage within specified temperature range
 Avoiding exposure to moisture before application
 Using glue within recommended shelf life
 Curing bonds fully with thermal ramps or UV cycles
 Inspecting visually for complete coverage without voids
 Tracking process parameters like time, temperature, pressure
Like soldering, gluing is a manufacturing process requiring close
monitoring and control.
Conclusion
Gluing is a critical process used across PCB fabrication, component
attachment, wire bonding, and protecting assemblies. The wide range of
PCB glues available allows selecting formulations optimized for specific
applications and performance requirements. Keeping gluing processes
under tight quality control ensures boards with strong, reliable adhesive
bonds.
PCB Glue FAQ
Q: What are some key considerations when selecting a PCB laminate
bonding glue?

A: Matching Tg, thermal conductivity, dielectric properties, temperature
resistance, and flexibility needs of the board. Also consider resin flow
viscosity and working life.
Q: How is cured glue reworked on a PCB?
A: Removing cured glue mechanically can damage boards. Rework
generally involves heating to soften the glue for removal. Laser ablation
can also detach glue.
Q: What processes can help improve adhesion of PCB glues?
A: Surface roughening through chemical or mechanical abrasion gives
more surface area. Plasma surface activation also improves bond strength.
Match coefficients of thermal expansion.
Q: What safety precautions are important when working with PCB glues?
A: Adhesive fumes require good ventilation. Cured blobs can be sharp.
Cured cyanoacrylates generate heat. Follow all material safety datasheet
(MSDS) guidelines.
Q: How is PCB glue viscosity monitored and controlled?
A: Viscometers measure viscosity. Adhesives are kept in cold storage to
inhibit curing and maintain viscosity. Dispense process parameters may
need adjustment to account for viscosity shifts over adhesive lifetime.

Uses of PCB glue on electronics
The electronic industry largely depends on printed circuit boards as the
main components. The PCB utilizes adhesive materials in encapsulating
components, conformal coating, wire tacking, and bonding surface-mount
components.
A distinctive PCB is a multi-overlay built-up plastic board with a defensive
plastic covering. At first, manufacturers used hardware to cover boards.
They interconnected multi-facet boards ‘thru-hole innovation using drilled
holes. Component and board scaling down prompted ‘surface-mount
innovation’ during the 1980s. With surface-mount innovation, segment
contacts are bound straightforwardly to pad sections on the outside of the
board. It made it conceivable to dispose of through-board connections
and drilled openings.
There is significant utilization for PCB glue, basically natural, are as per the
following:
 Conformal coating of circuit boards
 Potting and encapsulating electronic components
 Wire tacking
 Bonding of surface-mount components (SMCs)
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Bonding activities
1. Conformal coatings
While it is not rigorously the aftereffect of a glue holding measure, you
can use similar substance kinds of gum. For example, silicones, acrylics,
polyurethanes, and epoxy glue for PCB. The point is to deliver a covering
that certainly sticks to and covers all the board and its parts. A conformal
covering is commonly used to shield the board from natural factors, for
example,
 Short circuits.
 Dampness and mold changes in help temperature (ordinarily from –
40ºC to +200ºC)
 Corrosion
Conformally covered PCBs are shielded from natural harm and
mechanical and electrical obstruction.
 Encapsulation and potting
It is a strategy for covering little surfaces or spaces with a material that will
shield parts from physical and ecological harm. Encapsulation parts
likewise give extra protection ability.

Potting compounds typically display excellent synthetic properties and
high grip to plastics and metals, these being the materials of development
of the holders and the parts.
Regular saps utilized for encapsulating are acrylics, silicones,
polyurethanes, and epoxies, the last as a rule being UV-relieving
definitions.
Similarly, there are different techniques for exemplifying electronic
segments, to be specific projecting and trim. Projecting utilizes similar glue
as preparing, albeit the compartment is generally eliminated after the
pitch has been relieved.
Dissimilar to the potting cycle where the holder turns into a fundamental
piece of the segment. For the most part, Embellishment includes the
infusion of pre-dissolved thermoplastic pitches into a form containing
the electronic components or hardware.

pcb component glue
 Wire-tacking glues
Connection using wires is normal on PCBs. The utilization of wires permits
substitution as well as an increase of printed wiring on the PCB. A portion
of the explanations behind this is as per the following:
 To fix board harm or defeat the impacts of ill-advised assembling.
 To redesign or change a PCB.
 To conquer a plan imperfection found during board testing.
Typically, a protected wire is stripped and bound at each finish to cushions
and part drives, at that point fortified or marked to the board substrate.
The holding keeps the wire from moving around and goes about as an
underlying glue in conditions where vibration could happen.
The glue that one can choose for wire attaching incorporates
light-reparable acrylics, epoxies, and cyanoacrylates. Practically speaking,
cyanoacrylates are generally utilized, regularly related to a suitable
activator to speed the fixed time to around half a minute.
 Surface-mount devices (chip holding)

Surface-mount devices (SMDs) are set on little dots or spots of uncured
glue and afterward relieved set up by warming or openness to UV
radiation. It gets the SMDs solidly set up during resulting measure tasks
like leaded-gadget addition or cleaning until they can be fastened to the
board’s patch pads. Surface-mount glue can serve two capacities: they go
about as a handling help (for example, holding a section briefly until it
tends to be for all time appended by patching). They can likewise give
pressure alleviation to bind connection during administration to forestall
untimely disappointment of the electrical bonds. Subsequent to soldering,
the now repetitive glue should not any effect on the hardware at all.
To meet the necessities for effectively holding SMDs, the accompanying
properties are expected of the glue:
 Good electrical properties after curing
 High strength and good flexibility
 Non-slumping during the heated cure cycle
 Rapid curing
 High wet strength
 Non-stringing
 Suitability for high-speed dispensing of very small dots of consistent
profile and size
 Long shelf life

Contingent upon the specific capacity of the surface-mount glue, it tends
to be electrically conductive, electrically non-conductive, and thermally
conductive. Three compound kinds of glue are generally utilized for
surface-mount segment holding: acrylics, epoxy glue, and urethane
acrylates. These glue variants, along with different sorts utilized in
hardware applications, are talked about in more prominent detail
beneath.
Preferably, surface-mount glues should be of the single component type.
It maintains a strategic distance from pot-life issues, air entanglement,
and changes in thickness ordinarily connected with double or multi-part
frameworks. Usually, the glues will fix inside two minutes at raised
temperatures alright for PCBs and related parts.
Types of glue for circuit boards

PCB Glue
We need to consider three diverse handling stages while choosing circuit
board adhesive applications. They include the solid-material or cured
phase, the curing (transitional) phase, and the liquid-resin or uncured
phase. The presentation of the solid-material adhesive is eventually the
most significant since it enhances quality.
The technique for applying the PCB component glue is critical, specifically
given the need to guarantee that the right sum is applied in the right spot.
Significant techniques for applying glues in hardware applications are
syringe application, pin transfer, and screen printing. Syringe application is
presumably the most famous strategy, ordinarily via electro-pneumatically
controlled syringes for moderate creation of a wide range of kinds of PCB.
The different kinds of glue for circuit boards include:
1. Ultraviolet curing glues
Light-curing encapsulants, coatings, and adhesives are being utilized in the
hardware producing industry, expanding recurrence since they meet the
necessities for materials and preparing inside this industry. Those
elements incorporate ecological protection policies (environmentally
damaging solvents and added substances are not needed), fabricating
yield improvement, and item cost. Light-curing glues are easy to utilize

and are immediately relieved without the requirement for raised
temperature relieving.
The glues are regularly acrylic-based details and contain photograph
initiators that actuated by bright radiation, structure-free revolutionaries
to start the polymer-shaping (relieving) measure. Bright light should have
the option to infiltrate into the uncured sap, a downside of light-curing
glues. Stores of pitch that are dimly shaded, blocked off, or thick are hard
to fix.
 Thermally conductive glues
Scaling down electronic hardware may bring about issues of heat arise,
which can cause untimely malfunction of electronic parts if their most
fantastic working temperature is surpassed. Thermally conductive glue
can give a heat-directing way, securing semiconductors, diodes, or other
force gadgets to appropriate heat sinks to guarantee such a temperature
does not happen.
Non-metallic (insulating) or metallic (electrically conductive) powders are
mixed into the glue plan to make high-thickness glues, which are
exceptionally thermally conductive. The most well-known hot glue PCB is
formed with acrylics, silicone, and epoxy.

 Electrically conductive PCB adhesive
By their inclination, most glues, both natural and inorganic, are not
electrically conductive. It applies to the principle types utilized in electronic
applications. They include cyanoacrylates, urethane acrylates, silicones,
cyanoacrylates, acrylics, and epoxy glue for PCB. Notwithstanding, in
numerous applications, including coordinated circuits and surface-mount
gadgets, electrically conductive glues are required.
There are two sorts of electrically conductive glues, which are anisotropic
and isotropic. Anisotropic glues are good conductors in all directions.
However, an isotropic glue conducts in the upward (z-pivot) heading just
and is in this way uni-directional. The isotropic glues loan themselves to
almost negligible difference interconnection. It ought to be noticed that
valuable as conductive glues are, they cannot be essentially ‘dropped in’ as
patch choices. They are bad with tin or aluminum, nor where there are
enormous holes or where they are probably going to be presented to wet
conditions in help.
The typical method of changing non-conductive glues over to electrically
conductive materials is to add reasonable filler to the base material.
Generally, the last is an epoxy pitch. Commonplace fillers used to give
electrical conductivity are carbon, nickel, and silver. Silver is the most

broadly utilized. The conductive glues themselves are either in a fluid or
pre-structure.
 Other glue types
The glues referenced above are the significant sorts utilized in ordinary
gadgets fabricating strategies. There are others, nonetheless, which are
still generally utilized:
 Polyimides: These are high-temperature saps (enduring up to 300ºC
or somewhere in the vicinity) utilized in high technology hardware
applications (ordinarily aviation) for wire coatings and adaptable
circuits. They usually are utilized as polyamic corrosive forerunners
and require troublesome and delayed restoring cycles before
shaping the average adaptable, heat-safe polyamide material.
 Silicone resins: More a sealant than a primary glue, silicone sap is
utilized as an encapsulant just as for conformal covering. Silicone
pitches have excellent low and high warmth resilience (regularly –
60ºC to +200ºC) yet can mess up optional activities on account of
the arrival of low-sub-atomic weight silicone compounds, which
sully surfaces over a wide region.
 Cyanoacrylates: These have effectively been referenced for their
utilization in wire-attaching applications. Cyanoacrylates are
single-part glues, which fix quickly when presented to dampness

noticeable all around. The utilization of these glues with an activator
speeds up the relieving interaction significantly more.
There are significantly more glues, which have discovered use in hardware
applications, and without a doubt, more will follow. Nonetheless, the sorts
referenced above are grounded and generally utilized and structure a
fundamental piece of the gadgets fabricating industry.
Conclusions
The gadgets market involves a wide range of enterprises, including media
communications, customer, PC, and car areas, utilizing the PCB as the
fundamental structure block for their items. Several years ago, the
measure of glues utilized in creating PCBs and other electronic parts was
insignificant. Presently the shortfall of glues from gadgets producing is
incomprehensible. Natural, wellbeing, cost, and assembling speed are
driving variables for the proceeding and always growing utilization of
glues in the business.
The days when soldering was the elite joining technique in PCBA have a
distant memory. The point currently is to zero in on the utilization of glues
as patch choices. There is still some best approach, as the glue should

assume control over the mechanical properties of the bind and be
electrically and thermally conductive to a serious level.
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3. Types and Applications of an Audio Oscillator
4. A Closer Look at IR Sensor: Types and Applications
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RAYMING PCB & ASSEMBLY

Applications and Types of PCB Glue

functions ranging from laminate bonding to strain relief. Selecting the

mechanical connections on printed circuit boards. This article provides an

and common glue types.

PCB Gluing Applications

Glue serves a variety of roles in PCB manufacturing:

 Laminate bonding – Bonds layers of fibreglass in multilayer PCBs

 Component attach – Glues components

like resistors or capacitors to the PCB

 Wire tacking – Temporary bonding of wires before soldering

 Strain relief – Reinforces soldered connections against

 Edge bonding – Bonds the edge of flex PCB layers

 Masking – Protective coating over components or traces

 Thermal interface – Glues heat sinks to devices

PCB Manufacturing & Assembly Services https://www.raypcb.com/

adhesive meets required performance criteria.

Request PCB Manufacturing & Assembly Quote Now

Glue Material Properties

PCB glues exhibit a range of material characteristics that determine their

suitability for particular applications:

 Shear strength – Ability to withstand lateral force

 Tensile strength – Withstand pulling/stretching force

 Impact resistance – Absorb sudden impacts without breaking bond

PCB Manufacturing & Assembly Services https://www.raypcb.com/

 Room temperature cure – Cures through oxidation at room

 UV light cure – Cures quickly under UV exposure

 Heat cure – Cures at elevated temperature

 Operating temperature range

 Glass transition temperature

 Coefficient of thermal expansion

 Dielectric strength – Resists electrical breakdown under voltage

 Volume resistivity – Resists conduction of electricity

 Dielectric constant – Ability to store charge in an electric field

Outgassing – Release of gaseous vapors during cure. Important for

Reworkability – Ability to detach/rework bonds for repair needs

PCB Glue Types

cure through a chemical reaction between epoxide resin and a curative

hardener. Key properties:

 Exceptional bond strength and temperature resistance

 Low outgassing and high dielectric strength

 Long working life for easier application

Epoxies come in a variety of formulations tuned for flexibility, thermal

shock resistance, etc.

Acrylic adhesives cure through exposure to ultraviolet radiation. They are

often used for component attachment on the PCB surface. Benefits

 Cure rapidly under UV light

 Room temperature storage before curing

 Good dielectric and thermal properties

Cyanoacrylates, or super glues, are fast-curing adhesives used for wire

tacking and temporary bonding during assembly. Properties:

 Extremely rapid room temperature cure

 Low viscosity for wicking into joints

 Ability to cure with minimal moisture

 High shear and impact strength

CA glues provide quick, strong, temporary bonds.

Silicone adhesives cure at room temperature through reaction with

moisture in the air. Applications include: