Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Abstract

The interest to apply nanotechnology in food preservation and in food quality control largely increased in last few years. The development of active packaging materials which are able to interact with substances produced during the food decay and preserve the quality by releasing the active compounds or to sense its decay at the early stage, is very important issue to be address .[1, 2] The aim of our project is to develop the method for long-term immobilization of nanoscaled containers such as polymer vesicles (polymersomes) on the solid support. The active compounds are stored in polymer vesicles attached to the packaging surface and are released into the food upon first signs of decline in the freshness of the food. The polymersomes, formed by the self-assembly of amphiphilic block copolymers, were covalently attached via hydrazone bonds on the glass surface. Since, the prerequisite of such systems is to fulfil healthy and safety issues, a high stability of the attached nanocontainers is required. The architecture and stability of attached vesicles were not affected for more than 11 months under dry conditions. The glass surfaces before and after vesicle attachment were characterized by contact angle, AFM and QCM techniques. The stability of active surfaces under wet conditions and various pH media, as well as the immobilization on other surfaces, is still under investigation.

Biography

Svetlana Stolarov has completed her Master degree in chemistry at University of Basel in 2013. Currently she is a PhD student in Prof. Cornelia Palivans group at University of Basel.

Email: svetlana.stolarov@unibas.ch