Barriers and Chemistry in a Bottle: Mechanisms in Today’s Oxygen Barriers for Tomorrow’s Materials

The stability of many organic compounds is challenged by oxidation reactions with molecular oxygen from the air in accordance with thermodynamics. Whereas glass or metal containers may protect such products, these packaging types also offer severe disadvantages over plastics. Large-scale packaging, especially for food and beverage industries, has shifted towards polymeric materials with passive and active oxygen barrier technologies over the last decades. Even though patent literature is flooded with innovative barrier systems, the mechanisms behind them are rarely reported. In a world where packaging requirements regarding recyclability and safety are continuously getting stricter, accompanied by the appearance of emerging applications for plastic oxygen barriers (such as organic semi-conductors), research towards new materials seems inevitable. To this cause, proper in-depth knowledge of the existing solutions is a prerequisite. This review therefore attempts to go deep into the problems at hand and explain the chemistry behind the existing solution strategies and finally discusses perspectives suggesting new applications such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar cells