Can a coating extend freshness in a bag of chips?
Nano-thin transparent barrier coating aims to extend shelf life of packaged foods
By Overspray Staff | July 14, 2010
Can grocery stores extend food freshness of potato chips and cereals? Researchers at the German Fraunhofer Institute for Electron Beam and Plasma Technology think so.
The institute has developed a new barrier coating that enhances the shelf life of food packaging.
The institute says that researchers used a new plasma assisted technology that allowed them to create a transparent coating that is up to 100 times thinner than traditional layers such as silicon oxide and polyvinylidene chloride (PVdC). The 10 nm aluminum oxide coating has the same barrier properties as existing films and preserves the shelf life by curbing the diffusion of oxygen and humidity inside the package, says the institute in a press release.
The nano-thin coating also helps conserve resources, since the barrier can be a hundred times thinner than traditional layers while retaining the same barrier properties. The new technique also eliminates chlorine, a chemistry traditionally used in the production of polymeric barriers.
The new coating can be used in any food packaging but the most likely application is in products that need to maintain a crunchy texture, such as cereals and potato chips.
The institute has developed a vacuum-based roll to roll process to apply the coating. It can coat approximately 29,000 sq m of foil per hour and can be used on films with widths of up to four metres.
Unlike traditional roll coaters, this system doesn’t evaporate aluminum or aluminum oxide. Instead, it uses plasma to enhance the layer properties, says the Fraunhofer Institute’s Nicholas Schiller, head of the Flexible Products Coatings business unit.
“The roll-to-roll barrier coating is suitable for a wide spectrum of polymeric materials. This makes the technology applicable and affordable for a broad range of products.”
The development of the plasma assisted vacuum technology is the result of a partnership between Fraunhofer, Vacuum Technology Dreden ISA and Applied Materials Inc.
John Busch, with Applied Material’s Web Coating Products division in Alzenau, Germany, says that his company “has successfully integrated Fraunhofer’s plasma technology into a new line of industrial vacuum roll coaters. This involved the scaling up of key components and a joint effort to improve existing processes. We are very pleased that our collaboration with Fraunhofer FEP has resulted in a system to enable their advanced coating technology to become available for large-scale packaging production.”
The companies collaborate ith Biofilm S.A. a packaging materials manufacturer that incorporated the new technology in its Mexicaqn manufacturing plant.
www.fep.fraunhofer.de
Top image: An industrial vacuum roll coater from Applied Materials Inc.
