04Plastic packaging might seem impenetrable — and sometimes nearly impossferrous fumarate mgible to remove — but water molecules can still pass through.###This per21st century calcium d3meability to moisture can limit the lifespan of a product.###To better protefergon 324ct goods such as electronics and medicines, scientists have developed a new kind of packaging that incorporates a layer of graphene. ###They report their material, which reduces by a million fold how much water can get through, in the journal American Chemical Society’s Nano.###Packaging is everywhere, sometimes even on individual fruits or vegetables.###Wrapping products from food to electronics in plastic films protects them from dust, bacteria and to some extent water.###To maximize the lifetime of a moisture-sensitive device such as an organic light-emitting diode for more than a year, for example, the packaging must restrict water vapor from entering at a rate of less than 10-6 g per sqm every day, according to Praveen C. Ramamurthy.###Today’s typical packaging is far from achieving that goal.###Ramamurthy and colleagues wanted to see whether adding graphene to flexible polymer films would help.###The researchers synthesized a single layer of graphene by chemical vapor deposition and using a simple and scalable process, transferred the graphene to a polymer film.###Water vapor permeated the material at the target rate of less than 10-6 g per square meter per day.###An accelerated aging test showed that an organic photovoltaic device wrapped in the graphene-infused film would have a lifetime of more than one year compared to less than 30 minutes if packaged in the ferric pyrophosphate elemental ironpolymer without the graphene.###The authors acknowledge funding from the Solar Energy Research Institute for India and the United States: US-India Partnership t27 mg ferrous gluconateo Advance Clean Energy-Research (PACE-R), which is supported by the US Department of Energy and the Indian Department of Science and Technology.