Polymers for Circular Packaging Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Our permanently growing demand for packaging materials with a wide variety of different requirement profiles and the urgent necessity of circular material flows to preserve material and resource values are generating the crucial challenge of a consistent functional and circular use of polymers in packaging applications. The protective nature of the packaging requires using polymers in very different forms, ranging from natural or synthetic multilayer films to polymeric layers on natural fiber-based material or used as additives within base materials and functional layers. Each polymer is intended to add a certain function, but more than ever before, each component used in the packaging materials needs to be chosen with respect to its specific value or impact on material cycles after their first usage.

We are pleased to invite you to share your research on the use of polymers for the overall improvement of packaging material performances, focusing on combining their efficient and functional application, the achievement of new or improved material and packaging properties, and their performances in value-keeping loops. This Special Issue intends to contribute to an overarching understanding of the following topics:

• Molecular properties and changes in the molecular structure of polymers, including intentionally added substances and the appearance of non-intentionally added substances and their affinity to migrate into the packed products;
• The emerging macroscopic processing properties and their changes during the lifetime of the packaging POLYMERS due to thermodynamic or mechanical load or deterioration;
• The specific behavior achieved by polymers in the particular processes of packaging machines.

We strongly encourage you to submit original research on the use, value, and performance of polymers from new recyclable, secondary, natural, and residual resources in packaging material to improve its function independent of whether they are used as an additive, layer or composite structure in or on polymeric or paper substrate. The contributions may address all kinds of packaging functions and those functions needed during the processing on packaging machines, such as strength, rigidity, ductility, strain, sealing, barrier against water vapor, oxygen or migration of harmful substances, chemical or mechanical resistance, odor, printing behavior, prints and decoration and tribological properties. Due to the fact that tailored layer structures can achieve many functional profiles of packaging materials, articles may also address modifications and scaling of coating technologies.

Within the material production, coating, and packaging processes, we expect that modeling and simulation techniques using analytical, numerical, or heuristic methods, including artificial intelligence, are needed to explain the origin of recognized phenomena, and we support their use and introduction within the submitted articles.

Prof. Dr. Marek Hauptmann
Dr. Frank Welle
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.