The flexible packaging industry has recorded significant growth over the past few years, especially due to increased demand from the medical, automobile, construction, food, beverage, and retail industries. Recently, as the issue of packaging waste has emerged, there is a growing movement to reduce plastic packaging. However, due to outstanding advantages of plastic such as transparency, low cost, high impact strength, tremendous studies have been conducted on replacing petroleum-based plastic with biodegradable plastics. On the other hand, as the packaging industry grows, consumers want packaging not only to protect their products but also to meet additional functions. In line with this, D. Schaefer mentioned that the market for smart packaging that performs these additional capabilities is expected to reach $26.7 billion by 2024. In the previous study, we developed the smart packaging materials with temperature-responsive composite films using polylactic acid (PLA) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) that were considered eco-friendly materials and montmorillonite nanoclay by melt blending method. By developing a two-step extrusion process, composite films with increased permeability only at a specific temperature were secured. The morphology, mechanical, thermal properties, and barrier properties of the composite film were analyzed. It is noteworthy that oxygen permeability increased rapidly around 50-70C, known as the microwave steam generation section. However, in actual application, microwave heating is a multi-physical phenomenon involving electromagnetic waves and heat transfer, so the temperature may vary depending on the location, shape, size of the packaging, and components of the product. In this study, a comparative analysis was conducted with commercial microwave food soft packaging materials. In addition, the applicability of soft packaging products using temperature-responsive breathability was evaluated.

Applicability of flexible packaging materials using temperature-responsive breathable composite films

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ACS Fall 2022

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