Layers of cellulose nanofibers (CNF) have great potential to be used in food packaging applications because of their oxygen and grease barrier properties. However, because of their sensitivity to moisture, they likely will need to be used in a layered structure with water vapor barrier layers. Waterborne barrier coatings (WBBC) have the potential to provide this water vapor barrier, but their performance on paper with a CNF layer has not been described in the literature. Paper that had a CNF layer was coated with three different WBBC with various levels of two different barrier pigments to improve the water vapor barrier properties of these systems. The effective diffusion coefficient of these systems was obtained by fitting the data to a two-layer diffusion model. A finite element code was used to predict the flux rate of water vapor through the barrier layers in the presence of a barrier pigment. The dangers of samples “blocking” in production have been tested as well as grease barrier properties. The presence of the CNF layer on paper is shown to improve the performance of the water vapor barrier layer, in some cases, by a factor of six. Adding barrier pigment to the WBBC improves barrier properties at low concentration by 15%, but as the concentration of pigment increases, the barrier properties decrease. The water vapor transmission rate does not decrease to the same order of magnitude as expected from simple theoretical models and the finite element calculations. This result likely is linked to fine bubbles in the coatings that are hard to remove or other defects that are generated during coating or drying. Barrier pigments remove concerns around blocking. All samples had good grease barrier properties.

纤维素纳米纤维（CNF）层具有氧气和油脂阻挡性能，因此在食品包装应用中具有巨大的潜力。但是，由于它们对湿气敏感，因此可能需要将它们用于具有水蒸气阻隔层的层状结构中。水性阻隔涂料（WBBC）具有提供这种水蒸气阻隔的潜力，但是在具有CNF层的纸张上的性能尚未在文献中进行描述。在具有CNF层的纸张上涂上三种不同的WBBC，以及不同含量的两种不同的隔离颜料，以改善这些系统的水蒸气隔离性能。通过将数据拟合为两层扩散模型，可以获得这些系统的有效扩散系数。在存在阻挡颜料的情况下，使用有限元代码来预测水蒸气通过阻挡层的通量速率。已经测试了样品在生产中“粘连”的危险以及隔油层的性能。在某些情况下，纸上CNF层的存在可将水蒸气阻隔层的性能提高六倍。向WBBC中添加阻隔颜料可将低浓度时的阻隔性能提高15％，但随着颜料浓度的增加，阻隔性能会下降。水蒸气的传输速率不会降低到与简单的理论模型和有限元计算所期望的数量级相同的数量级。该结果可能与涂层中难以去除的细小气泡或涂层或干燥过程中产生的其他缺陷有关。隔离颜料消除了有关粘连的担忧。所有样品均具有良好的隔油性能。