Moisture-impermeable polymer using graphene for pharmaceutical packaging
Use
of graphene will also bring down the cost of packaging drugs, food and
electronic items
Scientists from the Indian Institute of
Science (IISc), Bengaluru, are close to field-testing an alternative to plastic packaging
for the electronics and pharmaceutical industry, which can increase the shelf-life of
electronics, drugs and subsequently bring down costs. Prof
Srinivasan Raghavan from the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering and Prof
Praveen C Ramamurthy from the Department of Materials Engineering are using
graphene to make paper impermeable, that is moisture-proof, which will in turn
help replace plastic packaging. A prototype has already been made.
While flexible, transparent and moisture
impermeable materials are critical for packaging applications in electronic,
food and pharmaceutical industries, the average plastics or polymers are, not
water proof enough, thereby reducing the lifetime of electronics and medicines.
"For the packaging industry, it will be
significant, especially for pharma. Medicines have expiry dates and major issue is due to
packaging failure, as a result of which moisture and oxygen seeps into the
packets. So drugs interact with the oxygen and moisture and consequently fail.
Hence, if there is better packing, this will increase the lifetime or
expiration date of drugs by several more years, automatically reducing the cost
of medicines. The field tests are expected to start within a month,"
Prof Ramamurthy told Bangalore Mirror.
The team says that if realised, it could be
an invention that parallels the invention of plastics themselves atleast as far
as packaging goes, with particular respect to current packaging used for
medicines and electronics.
As a step in this direction, the researchers
have developed and demonstrated moisture-impermeable polymer using graphene.
This, according to the team, reduces its water vapour transmission rate by up
to a million fold. The team has applied for a patent and the findings have been
published in ACS Nano journal.
According to Gubbi Labs, which is a private
research collective, the new organic polymer is expected to address the
challenge of "permeation of atmospheric water vapour into flexible organic
electronic devices, thus increasing its active lifetime and improving
performance."
This whole project started when Prof Raghavan
told Prof Ramamurthy that they make graphene in their lab and it was
impermeable even to helium and that they were attempting to make paper
impermeable. "This is when I suggested that we first try it on plastics as
he was working on making plastics, which are supposedly waterproof and even
more impermeable. The next week we had the first result and soon the patent was
submitted," added Prof Raghavan.
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