In a recently published article in the journal ACS Applied Material & Interfaces, Jeff Youngblood and colleagues from Purdue University demonstrated the use of a shear-coating technique to developed gas barrier nanocellulose films which were anisotropic, allowing the researchers to control the free volume of the material. These tunable nanocellulose films produced an oxygen barrier which performed 97 times better than biaxially oriented poly(ethylene terephthalate) (BoPET) and 27 times better than ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH) which are both traditionally used materials.