Introduction
An extremely large and well-known class of adhesives is based on starch and dextrin. These play a very large part in industrial production, especially the packaging industry. Starch and dextrin are principally used for bonding paper products. Most corrugated boxboard for making cartons is bonded with starch based adhesives, and other porous substrates can be easily joined with these versatile adhesives.
Starch and dextrin adhesives are readily available, low in cost, and easy to apply from water dispersion. They are considered to be the least expensive class of paper packaging adhesive. Formulated starch and dextrin adhesives can be applied hot or cold. These adhesives are generally provided to the end-user as powder and mixed with water prior to use to form a relatively thick paste. Starch and dextrin cure by the loss of moisture.Since these adhesives cure to a thermosetting structure, they have excellent heat resistance. Another significant advantage is their very slow curing rate allowing ample assembly time.