Grant: Idea to Innovation

300 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced annually. This is a global challenge and 170 nations pledged to significantly reduce plastic use by 2030. New regulations and consumer behavior are making sustainable packaging (compostable and fully-recyclable) necessary in the food industry, but sustainable packaging does not provide an adequate barrier to the water and oxygen that cause food to spoil. Consumer-packaged-goods companies, and the film producers and packaging converters that supply their packaging materials, need barrier solutions to transition to sustainable packaging without increasing food waste and compromising food safety. The project team has developed atmospheric-pressure spatial atomic layer deposition (AP-SALD) technology for high-throughput coating of barriers on packaging materials, which is being commercialized by Nfinite Nanotechnology Inc. Compared to traditional barrier coatings, AP-SALD metal-oxide coatings are only a few tens of nanometers (billionths of a meter) thick, so they do not affect the compostability or recyclability of sustainable packaging, and they are free of pinholes so they provide superior barrier properties. Compared to traditional manufacturing methods, AP-SALD is solvent-free and open-air, so it is cheaper, faster, and green. In this project, the research team and Nfinite will optimize their novel AP-SALD barrier coatings on different sustainable packaging materials, transfer the technology to a roll-to-roll coating process, and develop an additional coating material for the sustainable packaging industry.The project will address remaining commercialization barriers, enabling Nfinite to sell their AP-SALD equipment to the packaging industry. The project will foster the growth of an innovative startup company and bring significant economic and environmental benefits to Canada. The technology will simultaneously reduce plastic waste, food waste, and associated greenhouse gas emissions.