Owing to advantages of polymeric materials for hydrogen tank liner like light-weight property and high specific strength, polymer based composites have gained much attention. Despite of many benefits, polymeric materials for fuel cell tank cause problems which is critical to applications as low gas barrier property, and poor processability when adding fillers. For these reasons, improving gas barrier property of polymer composites is required to study for expanding application fields. This work presents impermeable polymer nanocomposites by introducing thin barrier coating using layer by layer (LBL) deposition method. Also, bi-layered and quad-layered nanocomposites were fabricated and compared for identifying relationship between deposition step and gas barrier property. Reduction in gas permeability was observed without interrupting mechanical property and processability. It is discussed that proper coating conditions were suggested when different coating materials and deposition steps were applied. We investigated morphology, gas barrier property and mechanical properties of fabricated nanocomposites by FE-SEM, Oxygen permeation analyzer, UTM, respectively. In addition, we revealed the mechanism of barrier performance of LBL coating using materials which have high aspect ratio.

Keywords: Hydrogen tank liner, Layer by layer coating, Gas barrier property, Nanocomposite