Highly Oriented Gold/Nanoclay–Polymer Nanocomposites for Flexible Gas Barrier Films

Layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly, which uses electronic and ionic intermolecular bonding under nonvacuum conditions, is a promising technology for fabricating gas barrier films owing to its simple processing and easy formation of a multilayer structure. In this research, nanoclay-polymer multilayers of Na(+)-montmorillonite (Na-MMT) were fabricated. Particularly, the addition of AuCl3 on fabricated MMT layers caused a reaction with the surface silanol functional groups (Si-O-H) of the MMT platelets, resulting in the formation of Au2O3 on the MMT-polymer multilayers. The Au2O3 filled the vacancies between the MMT platelets and linked the MMT platelets together, thus forming a gas barrier film that reduced the water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) to 3.2 × 10(-3) g m(-2) day(-1). AuCl3-treated MMT-polymer multilayers thus have the potential to be utilized for manufacturing gas barrier films for flexible electronics on a large scale.