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Henkel Adhesive Technologies

Henkel Adhesive Technologies

Redefine the concept of product lifecycles

Debonding-on-demand adhesives: a powerful enabler of circularity

Circularity enabler

It’s not just about the substrates, it’s the space between them - that’s where innovation happens.

Henkel’s debonding-on-demand is more than just an innovative technology, it is a simple but powerful driver for circularity along the entire lifecycle of products. Enabling more efficient production, as well as the repair, reuse, repurpose and recycling of products and materials, debonding-on-demand helps customers across industries to achieve their sustainability goals.

With its broad portfolio, including structural adhesives, films, and tapes, Henkel offers the right solution for a wide range of applications and industries. All debonding technologies are designed to enable the controlled separation of bonded substrates by reducing the bond strength through specific triggers such as heat, electricity, or immersion. This allows for safe and efficient disassembly, while maintaining high bonding performance required during the use phase.

Debonding-on-demand has an impact on four major aspects of the product lifecycle:

Product design

Enabling new, more efficient designs and redefine what materials are used and how they are used.

Production

Optimizing production processes through effective recovery of materials at the end-of-line.

Product use phase

Fostering repair solutions that make it easy for consumers to extend product lifecycles.

End-of-life

Enabling recyclability at end-of-life and reuse of materials – helping reduce waste and go beyond regulatory requirements.

Our debonding-on-demand technologies

Selecting the appropriate trigger depends on the application´s specific requirements. Henkel offers a comprehensive range of trigger types to support a wide spectrum of use cases. 

Thermal trigger

Softening, decomposition or expansion of the adhesives´polymers, triggered by heat.

Electrical trigger

Obtaining a weak boundary layer that leads to separation of bonded materials, triggered by electrical current.

Chemical trigger

Softening, decomposition or dissolution of adhesive bonds, allowing for separation of material layers, triggered by specific solvent or chemical solution.

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Application examples

Application of labels on a dishwasher detergent
Wash-off adhesives

Adhesives designed with sustainability in mind ensure label integrity in use and easy wash-off during the recycling process.

Increasing value of recycled PET

Henkel’s water-based pressure sensitive adhesives are designed to support PET flake recycling. While conventional methods require an energy-intensive, high-temperature process to completely remove labels, this innovation offers excellent wash-off efficiency - even at 65°C for PE facestock. This ensures that labels can be easily removed from bottles using less energy, while increasing the purity and value of recycled PET.

Illustration of the debonding of a thermally conductive adhesive and the removal of prismatic cells from the battery pack
Debondable battery adhesives

Innovative debonding technologies that use specific triggers—such as heat or electricity—to enable the controlled separation of structural bonds.

Transforming the EV battery lifecycle

Henkel’s advanced debonding-on-demand technology enables an easy release of even high-strength structural adhesives (up to 12 MPa). This simplifies the repair of battery modules, supports second-life reuse, and enhances recycling efficiency.

Exploded View of a Vehicle Headlight
Debondable headlamp assembly

Henkel’s new debonding-on-demand solutions will enable fast, non-destructive removal of damaged headlamp units—without harming adjacent parts. Our debonding-on-demand technology will ease the repair burden by enabling component reuse, streamlined disassembly, and clean material recovery.

Redefining headlamp repairability

Henkel’s debonding-on-demand technology will help OEMs and suppliers reduce repair costs and achieve circularity goals. Enabling the repair of a damaged premium headlamp could reduce costs by more than 80% compared to full replacement. Debonding by thermal activation will enable clean separation of headlamp assemblies—preserving components and helping lower insurance premium.

Related resources

Debonding-on-demand technologies for multiple industries

Henkel's debonding-on-demand technologies are versatile, providing unique benefits to a variety of industries, including:

Illustration of the debonding of a thermally conductive adhesive and the removal of prismatic cells from the battery pack
Driving circularity with innovative adhesive solutions

Henkel’s debonding technologies go beyond joining materials; they empower industries to rethink product life cycles – to repair, reuse and recycle. Debonding-on-demand helps to keep the value of materials and products in the loop and move away from single-use consumption.

 

With Henkel’s expertise and close collaboration, customers can lead the way in advancing circularity, offering the solutions needed to meet today’s demands for more circular products.

FAQ

Debonding-on-demand is an enabler for circularity. Circularity is a holistic concept with global relevance in a global market. The key to circularity at a product's end-of-life lies in its design. Debonding-on-demand enables the smart design of products with reduced resource use in mind, with options for modularity, repairability and extending lifecycles of products in the use phase and recovering the value of materials at end-of-life e.g., for medical equipment, textiles, packaging, construction products, electronic devices or automotive and transport.

Debonding-on-demand adhesives are – similar to other adhesives – applied between two substrates, which enable high bond strength with structural properties. If the bond is to be disassembled, e.g. at a product’s end-of-life or for repair purposes, a specific trigger is applied to perform the debonding process.

Debonding-on-demand adhesives' high performance and safety throughout a product's use phase is promoted by the right choice of adhesive technology and debond trigger. Thereby, debonding-on-demand adhesives provide the required performance for bonding materials, while allowing disassembly and material separation on demand to facilitate reuse, repair or recycling.

The preferred bonding and debonding techniques are material and application specific. Henkel supports customers to rethink circularity from the beginning of the product design phase to reduce resource consumption and to allow design for reuse, reparability, maintenance, and recyclability.