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18th July 2016

Graphene-infused packaging is a million times better at blocking moisture

Plastic packaging might seem impenetrable – and sometimes nearly impossible to remove – but water molecules can still pass through. And this permeability to moisture can limit the lifespan of a product. To better protect goods such as electronics and medicines, U.S. and Indian scientists have developed a new kind of packaging that incorporates a single layer of graphene. They report their material, which reduces by a million-fold how much water can get through, in the journal ACS Nano.

These days, packaging is everywhere, sometimes even on individual fruits or vegetables. Wrapping products from food to electronics in plastic films can protect against dust, bacteria and to some extent water. But to maximise the lifetime of moisture-sensitive devices such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) for more than a year, for example, the packaging must restrict water vapour from entering at a rate of less than 0.000001 (10-6) grams per square metre every day, according to study author Praveen C. Ramamurthy. Today's typical packaging is far from achieving that goal. Ramamurthy and colleagues wanted to see whether adding graphene to flexible polymer films would help.

The researchers synthesised a layer of graphene by chemical vapour deposition and using a simple and scalable process, transferred the graphene to a polymer film. Water vapour permeated the material at the target rate of less than 10-6 grams per square metre per day. An accelerated aging test showed that an organic photovoltaic device wrapped in the graphene-infused film would have a lifetime of more than a year compared to less than half an hour if packaged in the polymer without the graphene.

 

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