Inorganic Barrier Coatings on Paper

Presented by Lindner Martina, Hochschule der Medien, Stuttgart

Sustainable packaging materials are highly required and paper is prone to be used for that. However, pure paper does not fulfil all packaging requirements, such as gas barrier. One possibility to achieve a higher gas barrier, is the application of thin inorganic layers on paper in order to increase the gas barrier and make it thus suitable as a primary packaging material.

When aluminium is applied to paper by physical vapour deposition, coating thickness and substrate roughness contribute to the defect density and hygroexpansion can cause defects that impair the coating. The effect of these influencing factors was quantified. By such coatings, gas barriers of 1 cm3/(m2dbar) for oxygen and 1 g/(m2*d) (23°C, 85% rh) for water vapour were achieved.