Internship | Debondable Lamination Adhesives for Flexible Multilayer Packaging

About this internship

The Circular Packaging program at TNO Brightlands Materials Center accelerates the transition to circular plastic packaging through innovations in material redesign, recycling technologies, and sustainability assessment. Multilayer polymer films play a crucial role in packaging due to their barrier properties, sealability, and printability, but their use of permanent adhesives makes them difficult to recycle and often leads to incineration. To address this challenge, TNO is developing reversible laminating adhesives that allow multilayer structures to be separated at end-of-life. This project focuses on integrating these debondable adhesives into multilayer packaging without compromising performance, and on enabling clean, trigger-based separation of layers to enhance recyclability and support the shift toward a circular plastics economy.

What will be your role?

In this internship, you will play an active role in advancing debondable adhesive technology for multilayer packaging. You will characterize the modified adhesive to assess its suitability for lamination, perform application tests on laminated multilayer films, and benchmark their performance against commercial multilayer structures. You will evaluate and implement the reversibility of the adhesive system by testing and characterizing the effectiveness of layer separation under trigger conditions. Finally, you will recycle the separated layers and assess the quality of the recovered materials, contributing directly to the development of recyclable packaging solutions.

What we expect from you

You are a proactive and independent bachelor/master student with background in one of the following areas: chemistry, material sciences or chemical/materials engineering. Knowledge and affinity for polymer science is a requirement, as well as experience working in a laboratory environment. Data collection and organization via Excel sheets and basic analysis/post-processing of data is expected. Experience with polymer processing, material/mechanical testing is a plus. Good communication skills in English, particularly for presenting your work and writing reports, is expected.

What you'll get in return

You will, of course, be properly supervised during your work placement and be given the scope for you to get the best out of yourself. Furthermore, we provide:

• A highly professional, innovative internship environment, within a team of top experts.
• A suitable internship allowance (615 euro for wo-, hbo- and mbo-students, for a full-time internship).
• Possibility of eight hours of free leave per internship month (for a full-time internship).
• A free membership of Jong TNO, where you can meet other TNO professionals and join several activities, such as sports activities, (work-related) courses or the yearly ski-trip.
• Use of a laptop.
• An allowance for travel expenses in case you don’t receive an OV-card.

TNO as an employer

At TNO, we innovate for a healthier, safer and more sustainable life. And for a strong economy. We are driven to push boundaries. There is all the space and support for your talent and ambition. You work with people who will challenge you: who inspire you and want to learn from you. Our state-of-the-art facilities are there to realize your vision. What you do at TNO matters: impact makes the difference. Because with every innovation you contribute to tomorrow’s world.