Cold plasma enhanced natural edible materials for future food packaging: structure and property of polysaccharides and proteins-based films

Abstract

Natural edible films have recently gained a lot of interests in future food packaging. Polysaccharides and proteins in edible materials are not toxic and widely available, which have been confirmed as sustainable and green materials used for packaging films due to their good film-forming abilities. However, polysaccharides and proteins are hydrophilic in nature, they exhibit some undesirable material properties. Cold plasma (CP), as an innovative and highly efficient technology, has been introduced to improve the performance of polysaccharides and proteins-based films. This review mainly presents the basic information of polysaccharides and proteins-based films, principles of CP modified biopolymer films, and the effects of CP on the structural changes including surface morphology, surface composition, and bulk modification, and properties including wettability, mechanical properties, barrier properties, and thermal properties of polysaccharides, proteins, and polysaccharide/protein composite-based films. It is concluded that the CP modified performances are mainly depending on the polysaccharides and proteins raw materials, CP generation types and treatment conditions. The existing difficulties and future trends are also discussed. Despite natural materials currently not fully substitute for traditional plastic materials, CP has exhibited an effective solution to shape the future of natural materials for food packaging.

Keywords:

• Cold plasma
• film
• polysaccharides
• protein
• food packaging

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Key R&D Program of Guangdong Province (grant no. 2021B0202070001) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31972205) for the supports. This research was also supported by Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (grant no. 2021A1515010644), the International S&T Cooperation Projects of Guangdong Province (grant no. 2020A0505100007), the Contemporary International Collaborative Research Centre of Guangdong Province on Food Innovative Processing and Intelligent Control ( grant no. 2019A050519001) and the Common Technical Innovation Team of Guangdong Province on Preservation and Logistics of Agricultural Products (grant no. 2021KJ145).

Funding

The Key R & D Program of Guangdong Province (grant no. 2021B0202070001) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31972205).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.