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Gas-barrier materials obtained by coating poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) substrates have already been studied in the recent literature. However, because of the benefits of using cheaper, biodegradable, and nonpolar polymers, multilayered hybrid coatings consisting of alternate layers of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets and a novel high amorphous vinyl alcohol (HAVOH) with zirconium (Zr) adducts as binders were successfully fabricated through a layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly approach. Atomic force microscopy analysis showed that rGO nanoplatelets were uniformly dispersed over the HAVOH polymer substrate. Scanning and transmission electron microscopies revealed that multilayer (HAVOH/Zr/rGO)n hybrid coatings exhibited a brick-wall structure with HAVOH and rGO as buildings blocks. It has been shown that 40 layers of HAVOH/Zr/rGO ultrathin films deposited on PET substrates lead to a decrease of 1 order of magnitude of oxygen permeability with respect to the pristine PET substrate. This is attributed to the effect of zirconium polymeric adducts, which enhance the assembling efficiency of rGO and compact the layers, as confirmed by NMR characterization, resulting in a significant increment of the oxygen-transport pathways. Because of their high barrier properties and high flexibility, these films are promising candidates in a variety of applications such as packaging, selective gas films, and protection of flexible electronics.

Self-assembling of reduced graphene oxide platelets, as a tailored interconnected network within a natural rubber matrix, is proposed as a mean for obtaining nanocomposites with improved gas barrier, as compared to neat natural rubber. Interestingly, this nanocomposite structure results to be much more effective than homogeneous dispersion of graphene platelike particles, even at low graphene loadings. Such behavior is interpreted on the grounds of a theoretical model describing permeability of heterogeneous systems specifically accounting for self-segregated graphene morphology.

A multilayer photoactive coating containing surface fluorinated TiO(2) nanoparticles and hybrid matrices by sol gel approach based on renewable chitosan was applied on poly(lactic acid) (PLA) film by a step wise spin-coating method. The upper photoactive layer contains nano-sized functionalized TiO(2) particles dispersed in a siloxane based matrix. For the purpose of improving TiO(2) dispersion at the air interface coating surface, TiO(2) nanoparticles were modified by silane coupling agent 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane (FTS) with fluoro-organic side chains. An additional hybrid material consisting of chitosan (CS) cross-linked with 3-glycidyloxypropyl trimethoxy silane (GOTMS) was applied as interlayer between the PLA substrate and the upper photoactive coating to increase the adhesion and reciprocal affinity. The multilayer TiO(2)/CS-GOTMS coatings on PLA films showed a thickness of ~4-6 μm and resulted highly transparent. Their structure was exhaustively characterized by SEM, optical microscope, UV-vis spectroscopy and contact angle measurements. The photocatalytic activity of the multilayer coatings were investigated using methyl orange (MeO) as a target pollutant; the results showed that PLA films coated with surface fluorinated particles exhibit higher activity than films with neat particles, because of a better dispersion of TiO(2) particles. The mechanical properties of PLA and films coated with fluorinated particles, irradiated by UV light were also investigated; the results showed that the degradation of PLA substrate was markedly suppressed because of the UV adsorptive action of the multilayer coating., (© 2011 American Chemical Society)