In the textile and clothing industry, the word "adhesive" usually relates to fusible interlinings, but sometimes to adhesive monofilaments. Many researchers have carried out investigations on the properties of fusible interlinings, but not many on adhesive monofilaments. This may be explained by fusible interlinings' being more commonly used than adhesive monofilaments. In fact, the main applications of adhesive monofilaments are reinforcement of edges, stabilising fabrics and adhering of non-sticking yarns. All these applications require advanced machinery which may not be feasible for some factories, even the domestic end-users. Therefore the application of adhesive monofilaments should be simple, otherwise it will not become popular. Braiding the adhesive monofilaments into tape as the end-product is a good way of simplifying the application process. The process can be more easily handled by the users, even the domestic users. Then more applications can be developed from the braided adhesive monofilament tapes. To explore the applications of braided adhesive monofilament tape, it is important to have a clear picture of the performance of the tape. A series of investigations has been recently carried out at the Institute of Textiles & Clothing of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, to study the effects of different tape widths and thicknesses on peel bond strength and on durability of the tapes, in order to discover uses for the domestic end-users. In this paper, previous research into the monofilaments, braiding, fusing and bond strength is reviewed in order to provide a theoretical framework for the series of investigations carried out at ITC.
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