Open Access

ARTICLE

Surface, Thermal and Antimicrobial Release Properties of Plasma-Treated Zein Films

S.K. Pankaj¹, C. Bueno-Ferrer¹, N.N. Misra¹, L. O’Neill², A. Jiménez³, P. Bourke¹, P.J. Cullen^1,4,*

1 BioPlasma Research group, School of Food Science and Environmental Health, Dublin Institute of Technology, Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin 1, Ireland
2 FOCAS Research Institute/School of Physics, Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin Street, Dublin 8, Ireland
3 University of Alicante, Analytical Chemistry, Nutrition and Food Sciences Department, PO Box 99, 03080 San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, Spain
4 School of Chemical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

* Corresponding Author:

Journal of Renewable Materials 2014, 2(1), 77-84. https://doi.org/10.7569/JRM.2013.634129

Received 27 November 2013; Accepted 20 January 2014;

Abstract

The effects of dielectric barrier discharge plasma treatment on zein fi lm containing thymol as an active ingredient were evaluated. The plasma discharge was optically characterized to identify the reactive species. A signifi cant increase in the fi lm roughness (p < 0.05) was observed due to the etching effect of DBD plasma, which was correlated with the increase in the diffusion rate of thymol in the food simulant. The diffusion of thymol from the zein fi lm was measured in aqueous solution. The kinetics of thymol release followed the Fick’s law of diffusion as shown by the high correlation coeffi cients between experimental and theoretical data. No signifi cant change (p > 0.05) was observed for the thermal properties of the antimicrobial fi lms after DBD plasma treatment.

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Keywords

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