(MIT: Cambridge, MA) -- MIT researchers have developed a lightweight polymer film that is nearly impenetrable to gas molecules, raising the possibility that it could be used as a protective coating to prevent solar cells and other infrastructure from corrosion, and to slow the aging of packaged food and medicines.

The polymer, which can be applied as a film mere nanometers thick, completely repels nitrogen and other gases as far as can be detected by laboratory equipment, the researchers found. That degree of impermeability has never been seen before in any polymer, and it rivals the impermeability of molecularly-thin crystalline materials such as graphene.

“Our polymer is quite unusual,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “It’s obviously produced from a solution-phase polymerization reaction, but the product behaves like graphene, which is gas-impermeable because it’s a perfect crystal. However, when you examine this material, one would never confuse it with a perfect crystal.”

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