Reinventing food packaging with safe and sustainable oxygen-scavenging biodegradable plastic
Researchers used cellulose derived from fermented coconut water to develop strong, multilayered biodegradable PLA-based films designed to help preserve food quality
Hasanuddin University
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Conventional food packaging plastics protect food from oxygen-induced spoilage but contribute to plastic pollution and long-term environmental challenges. To address this problem, researchers led by Prof. Andi Dirpan from Hasanuddin University, Indonesia, have reportedly developed multilayered biodegradable polylactic acid films reinforced with cellulose obtained from fermented coconut water (also known as nata de coco) and butylated hydroxytoluene, that combines oxygen-scavenging functionality with enhanced mechanical performance, offering a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative.
view moreCredit: Avlxyz from Openverse via Flickr Image source link: https://openverse.org/image/7dd5b698-7be7-4dc2-b338-a0719a211320
From ensuring that food remains fresh for a longer time to extending its shelf life for future consumption – the role of food packaging in modern society is indispensable. Conventional food packaging plastics are sturdy and highly effective at keeping oxygen out, one of the main drivers of food spoilage. Unfortunately, however, widely used materials, such as those used in everyday wrappers and containers, can persist in the environment for decades after disposal. As concerns over plastic waste continue to grow in the world today, scientists are seeking safe and eco-friendly alternatives that can preserve food effectively while also offering improved biodegradability after use.
Plant-based biodegradable plastics, such as polylactic acid (PLA), are a promising alternative, but fall short of conventional plastics; they typically do not block oxygen as well, nor do they hold up mechanically. Researchers have tried introducing additives to improve their strength or make them actively scavenge oxygen. However, these two enhancements are rarely combined and tested together. The real challenge lies in building a biodegradable plastic that actively manages oxygen while maintaining the strength and functionality required for food packaging.
With this goal in mind, Professor Andi Dirpan and his team at Hasanuddin University, Indonesia, have developed multilayer PLA-based films reinforced with microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and enhanced with an oxygen-scavenging compound, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). This innovative biodegradable material combines oxygen-scavenging functionality with enhanced mechanical performance, offering a promising alternative to conventional plastics.
Their work was made available online on May 5, 2026, and will be published in Volume 6 of ASEAN Journal for Science and Engineering in Materials on March 1, 2027.
A notable aspect of this work was the selection of cellulose source. Rather than using cellulose from wood or crops, the researchers produced bacterial cellulose from fermented coconut water, mimicking the process used to make ‘nata de coco,’ a jelly-like food produced by fermented coconut water. Why? Well, because bacterial cellulose is highly pure and rich in fiber, making it an effective reinforcing component. During fermentation, the bacteria produced a dense cellulose membrane, which the researchers purified and processed into MCC powder for use as an additive. It was then blended into a PLA film built in three thin layers, with the oxygen scavenger BHT placed only in the two inner layers that would face the food.
The team tested films made with different amounts of MCC powder and compared their coconut water-derived cellulose (MCC nata de coco) to a common commercial alternative (MCC avicel pH 102). Adding more cellulose made the films mechanically stronger and lowered the amount of oxygen that could pass through. However, it also made the films denser and noticeably stiffer. At a microscopic level, MCC nata de coco produced a more uniform, defect-free structure than the commercial alternative, which the researchers attributed to its higher purity and fiber content. Oxygen permeability tests also showed the resulting film performed better than plain PLA.
Notably, the film broke down quickly and steadily when buried in soil. “The biodegradation rate was found to be 28.86% over 25 days,” explains Prof. Dirpan. Adding further, he says, “These results show that the level of biodegradation is in accordance with that of biodegradable plastics made from similar polymers, which is over 25% within a period of 25 days.”
Through careful analysis of the relationship between structure, properties, and functions, the study highlighted an important trade-off. Although the reinforced film showed improved stiffness and useful oxygen-scavenging properties, it was brittle and did not stretch well before breaking. This matters because packaging materials must protect food while withstanding manufacturing, transport, and day-to-day handling. Simply put, the results show that combining reinforcing and oxygen-scavenging additives in a multilayer biodegradable system is promising, but the balance between barrier performance and flexibility still needs improvement.
Overall, this research provides useful design criteria for creating truly ecological plastics for food packaging in the future. As is evident from the bibliometric analysis conducted by the team, there has been an exponential growth in studies on advanced packaging technologies, driven by increasing demand for sustainable and functional materials. Against this backdrop, the efforts by the team of researchers led by Prof. Dirpan at Hasanuddin University are truly meaningful. Sharing his concluding thoughts, Prof. Dirpan says, “Our approach supports sustainable food packaging development and contributes to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly responsible production (SDG 12), climate action (SDG 13), and food preservation (SDG 2).”
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Reference
Title of original paper: Multilayer Oxygen-Scavenging Biodegradable Polylactic Acid Films Reinforced with Microcrystalline Cellulose and Butylated Hydroxytoluene: Experimental Study of Structure-Property-Function Relationships Completed with Bibliometric Analysis toward Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Journal: ASEAN Journal for Science and Engineering in Materials
URL: https://ejournal.bumipublikasinusantara.id/index.php/ajsem/article/view/946
About Hasanuddin University, Indonesia
Hasanuddin University (Universitas Hasanuddin or Unhas) is one of Indonesia’s largest autonomous universities, located in Makassar. Established on September 10, 1956, and named after Sultan Hasanuddin of the Gowa Kingdom, the university has grown into a major center for higher education with 17 faculties, including medicine, engineering, law, agriculture, and natural sciences. Its origins date back to 1947 with an economics faculty linked to the University of Indonesia. Today, Unhas focuses on advancing science, technology, arts, and culture, with a strong emphasis on the Indonesian Maritime Continent, aiming to develop innovative and globally competitive graduates.
Learn more, here: https://www.unhas.ac.id/about/
About Professor Andi Dirpan from Hasanuddin University, Indonesia
Dr. Andi Dirpan is a Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural Technology at Hasanuddin University, Indonesia. He specializes in post-harvest technology, fruit quality, agriculture technology products, and smart packaging. Dr. Dirpan has published more than 100 papers in reputed journals till date, which have been cited more than 1900 times.
Funding information
This research was supported by the RIIM LPDP and BRIN Grants, with grant numbers 113/IV/KS/07/2025 and 3259/UN4.1.7/PT.01.03/2025.
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Publication Date
1-Mar-2027
COI Statement
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.
Common plastic additive makes stretchable OLED displays brighter and more elastic
Research led by a University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering undergraduate found that an everyday plasticizer can boost the efficiency and stretchability of light-emitting polymer films
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Plasticizer-enhanced emissions from three OLED emitters with different colors.
view moreCredit: Image courtesy Wang Lab
The same class of chemical additive that makes plastic wrap pliable and vinyl flooring soft could be the key to unlocking the next generation of wearable displays. Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have discovered that blending a common plastic softener into light-emitting polymer films makes those films both brighter and more stretchable.
The work, led by a UChicago PME undergraduate student in the class of 2025, offers a surprisingly straightforward solution to one of the central challenges in stretchable OLED technology: making light-emitting materials flexible without reducing how efficiently they emit light.
“In the past, we’d been trying to come up with all kinds of complicated, new chemical structures for stretchable emitters,” said Sihong Wang, an associate professor of molecular engineering at UChicago PME and senior author of the new study published in Nature Communications. “But this method is really simple; you just mix two things together, and one of them is a commercially available additive that people have used for decades to soften everyday plastics.”
Pushing polymer chains apart
Engineers have long been trying to create stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs)—especially useful in wearable electronics, humanoid robots, and 3D displays in general. For Wang, stretchable OLEDs are one piece of a larger vision: a suite of body-compatible electronics that can sense, compute, and communicate directly on or inside the body. His lab has developed stretchable computing patches and biosensors toward that goal, and bright, efficient stretchable displays are a critical component. But balancing brightness and skin-like softness in these materials has been challenging.
Wang’s lab has previously worked to develop stretchable TADF (thermally activated delayed fluorescence) polymers, which are far more efficient than conventional emitters. But when these polymers are packed closely together in a film, neighboring units can interfere with each other. Their energies cancel out before any light is released, a phenomenon known as concentration quenching.
Wang and his colleagues suspected that introducing tiny bits of physical space between the polymers could solve this quenching problem. At the same time, such physical space created between light-emitting polymer chains could facilitate to more easily slide past each other under mechanical stretching—just like how plasticizers make commodity polymers softer.
To test this idea, undergraduate Glingna Wang turned to dioctyl phthalate (DOP), a plasticizer already widely used in everyday plastics like vinyl.
“Other groups had demonstrated that plasticizers can add some stretchability, but no one had tested the use of plasticizers in light-emitting polymers before,” said Glingna Wang.
A simple solution with outsized effects
The results surprised the research team. DOP didn’t just make the TADF films more stretchable; it also made them more efficient at fluorescing. The efficiency climbed from 60% for the untreated film to nearly 100%, approaching the theoretical maximum. At the same time, the film’s stretchability improved dramatically, from a crack-onset strain of just 5% to more than 110%.
Crucially, the effect was not limited to one polymer. When the team added DOP to four other TADF polymers with different chemical structures, all showed substantial gains in both efficiency and stretchability. That broad applicability is what distinguishes this approach from conventional strategies, which typically require custom chemical synthesis for each new material.
“We found a potentially broadly applicable physical method that could work across different types of polymer-based emitters,” said Sihong Wang.
In working OLED devices, the plasticized films led to a 35% improvement in efficiency over devices made without DOP.
Led by an undergraduate
Glingna Wang, who is now beginning a PhD degree at Northwestern University, said that when she joined the Wang lab, she didn’t expect to become the first author on a paper.
“I wasn’t expecting as an undergrad to be leading an independent project,” said Glingna Wang. “But from the great trust and guidance of Prof. Wang, and the supportive environment in the Wang group, gradually I got to learn and be able to tackle problems and face actual research issues on my own.”
She added that the experience prepared her well for graduate school, where she plans to keep studying biomedical applications of electronics.
At UChicago PME, Sihong Wang and colleagues are continuing to incorporate the new emitters into display arrays and are exploring their use in optical therapies and light-based biomedical devices.
Citation: “Approaching-unity PLQY and high stretchability in polymer emitters via molecular spacers,” Wang et al., Nature Communications, May 22, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-73223-9
Funding: This research was supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2239618), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (1DP2EB034563), the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory (U.S. Department of Energy, Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357) and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515).
Journal
Nature Communications
Article Title
Approaching-unity PLQY and high stretchability in polymer emitters via molecular spacers
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