Abstract
In the current work, a super-repellent biopaper suitable for food contact applications was developed. To do this, three different kinds of biopolymers, namely polylactide (PLA), poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV), and hydrophobic silica microparticles (SiO2), were sequentially processed by electrohydrodynamic processing (EDHP). As a first step, the ultrathin biopolymer fibers were deposited onto a commercial food contact cellulose paper by electrospinning and, thereafter, the nanostructured silica was sequentially electrosprayed. The multilayer coated papers were annealed at different temperatures to promote adhesion between the layers and enhance the super-repellent properties. The developed coatings were characterized in terms of morphology, permeance to water vapor, adhesion, mechanical resistance, and contact and sliding angle. The resultant multilayer biopapers presented a hierarchical micro/nanostructured surface with an apparent water contact angle (WCA) higher than 155° and sliding angle (SA) lower than 10° for all the tested biopolymers used. Among the different multilayer approaches, it was observed that the paper/PHBV/SiO2 showed the best performance, in terms of water vapor permeance; resistance after the tape peeling-off test; and food super-repelling properties to water, yogurt, and custard. Overall, this study presents the successful generation of super-repellent biopapers coated with PLA, PCL, or PHBV along with hydrophobic silica microparticles and its effectiveness for easy emptying food packaging applications to reduce food waste.
Highlights
Cellulose paper is one of the most employed materials used in packaging along with glass, wood, and plastic
The size of the silica particles may influence the superhydrophobicity of the resultant coating, as occurred with PTFE particles reported by Morita et al, where an increase in the PTFE particle size greatly reduced the sliding angle without modifying the static contact angle [40]
A similar morphology was recently reported for synthetic superhydrophobic self-cleaning NIR-reflective silica nanoparticles, obtaining a narrow size distribution of agglomerates made of monodispersed silica nanoparticles of around 40 nm [33]
Summary
Cellulose paper is one of the most employed materials used in packaging along with glass, wood, and plastic. In the field of food packaging, paper-based materials, containing different non-renewable additives and coatings, are present in many of our daily food products, such as milk-based products, beverages, bakery products, etc., mainly all due to its advantages as substrate, such as low price, renewability, biodegradability, non-toxicity, lightweight, flexibility, and relatively good mechanical strength [1,2] This type of material cannot be used alone for these and many other types of products due to its poor barrier properties and low sealability strength, as a result of its highly hydrophilic nature [2,3,4,5].
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