Packaging is a vital requirement for the effective handling of electronic, food, textile, medical, and pharmaceutical items. The demand for more environmentally-friendly, biodegradable, and sustainable materials in various engineering and scientific applications has been a driving factor behind the use of biopolymers for packaging, which traditionally has been dominated by petroleum-based plastics. One approach being investigated is the use of biopolymer-based barrier coatings on renewable and/or biodegradable non-barrier substrates, such as paper, to generate effective packaging solutions with commercially useful mechanical and barrier properties. The objective of this work is to investigate the feasibility of a scalable fabrication process for single-and bilayer coatings of cationic polymers applied to paper that is super-calendared and lightly siliconeconverted to reduce fluid penetration through the paper. A single or dual-layer slot die, integrated within a roll-to-roll system, was used to uniformly coat thin films of the biopolymers as independent or blended fluids on the paper at a flow rate and web velocity within the process window. For bilayer coatings, the modified polymers were coated simultaneously with cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) to create bilayer coatings. Barrier properties were examined by carrying out oxygen transmission rate (OTR) tests at a relative humidity of 50%. Oxygen transmission rates ranging from 2-30,500 cm 3 /m 2 /day were observed. Performance trends are hypothesized to arise from differences in hydrogen bonding and strong electrostatic attraction between CNC and the biopolymer coating components.
