EU undertakes research on better packaging using nanocomposites

07-Jul-05

High barrier polymer films using nanocomposites for a broad range of packaging and other industrial applications are being researched upon by the European Union. The research, backed with about €7 million, involves about 21 industrial and academic laboratories in 9 countries. Scheduled to run for four years, the results of the research are not expected to be revealed until the third or fourth year. The films to be developed are to offer very high protection against moisture or oxygen and are expected to find application in the packaging of pharmaceutical and food products. This campaign, named "Napoleon" coordinated out of the University of Surrey in the UK, also includes collaborators such as ESPCI in France, the University of the Basque Country in Spain plus the Universities of Clausthal and Ulm in Germany. BASF, L'Oreal, and Akzo-Nobel Resins are its industrial collaborators. New medicines that are complex and less stable, as they often contain biological proteins such as antibodies, are beginning to flood the markets. There is an increasing demand for improved packaging materials in the pharmaceutical arena, where conventional pharmaceutical packaging may not be enough to protect compounds from environmental damages. Therefore the NAPOLEON project is targeting waterborne nanocomposites - made up of either polymer-polymer or polymer-inorganic nanoparticles - with carefully controlled structures as building blocks for the new films. The researchers are initially expected to focus on film manufacturing techniques and methods, after which they will seek out small and medium-sized companies that may be interested in developing specific industrial applications of the technology.