Plasma based coating that makes plastic less permeable

19 January 2015

PET bottles are made of synthetic materials. Unfortunately, these materials are permeable to various gases. In order to make plastic more impervious, engineers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) in Germany, use plasmas to apply wafer-thin layers on surfaces.
Plastics have a very poor gas barrier, i.e. they are permeable to air which can pass through the material in both directions. The coating the engineers are working on would make plastic packaging one hundred times more impervious than it is today. Consequently, the shelf life of food products would be prolonged, and they would be protected from substances that seep out from the synthetic material (News Article RUB, 8 January 2015).
Click here for the news article.

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