Tailoring Functional Chitosan-Based Composites for Food Applications

abstract

Chitosan-based functional materials are emerging for food applications. The covalent bonding of molecular entities demonstrates to enhance resistance to the typical acidity of food assigning mechanical and moisture/gas barrier properties. Moreover, the grafting to chitosan of some functional molecules, like phenolic compounds or essential oils, gives antioxidant, antimicrobial, among others properties to chitosan. The addition of nanofillers to chitosan and other biopolymers improves the already mentioned required properties for food applications and can attribute electrical conductivity and magnetic properties for active and intelligent packaging. Electrical conductivity is a required property for the processing of food at low temperature using electric fields or for sensors application.

keywords

CROSS-LINKED CHITOSAN; MECHANICAL-PROPERTIES; GRAFTED CHITOSAN; FILMS; GENIPIN; ACID; ANTIOXIDANT; HYDROGELS; COATINGS; BARRIER

subject category

Chemistry

authors

Nunes, C; Coimbra, MA; Ferreira, P

our authors

acknowledgements

We thank all our collaborators involved in the work mentioned in this Accounts. FCT/MEC, Portugal (CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials - POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007679, FCT UID/CTM/50011/2013), through National funds and where applicable, co-financed by the FEDER, within the PT2020 Partnership Agreement. EU COST Action MP1202 and BIOFOODPACK (M-ERA-NET2/0021/2016) are also acknowledged. C. Nunes and P. Ferreira thank FCT for their grants SFRH/BPD/100627/2014 and IF/00300/2015, respectively.

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