Polymers are currently used in a wide variety of liquid and gas barrier applications, ranging from food and beverage packaging to construction materials. Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) using plastic substrates are expected to provide a means of producing next-generation displays that are thin, lightweight, and flexible. The use of transparent polymer films for encapsulating such displays is limited due to their unacceptably high permeation rates for oxygen and water vapor. Few thin films that possess the combination of flexibility, transparency, gas barrier, thermal stability and mechanical strength have been reported to date.Incorporation of platinum group metals, such as Palladium, Platinum or Rhodium, have seen widespread use for their catalytic properties in applications such as catalytic converters, groundwater treatment and fuel cells. In this project, palladium nanoparticles will be utilized as oxygen scavengers in order to enhance the barrier properties of selected polymer films. Palladium particles acts as catalysts for the reaction of oxygen with hydrogen to form water molecules, based on the Langmuir-Hinshelwood Mechanism. A dispersion of palladium nanoparticles within the selected polymer films can be realized using an infusion technique, where the polymer is evacuated under high vacuum and palladium is subsequently infused into its free volume via thermal degradation. This has the benefits of creating palladium nanoparticles on the scale of the polymer's free volume, creating a higher reactive surface area than through techniques such as surface coating or solution dispersion, which typically results in micron-sized particles due to agglomeration. The combination of inherent high gas barrier properties in the selected polymers, with the incorporation of oxygen scavenging effects of infused palladium nanoparticles, is expected to yield flexible and transparent films which can provide oxygen barrier properties similar to that of glass or metal.

High gas barrier polymer films using oxygen scavenging palladium nanoparticles

248th National Meeting (2014)

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