Zein's amphiphilic properties, film forming capability, and biodegradability make it a highly demanded polymer for fabrication of packaging materials, production of drug carrier nanoparticles, scaffolds in tissue engineering, and formation of biodegradable platforms for biosensors including microfluidic devices. Zein properties can be improved by chemical modifications, which are often analyzed with spectroscopic techniques. However, there is not a consensus on the structure of zein. For this reason, in this Review the aim is to compile the recent studies conducted on zein-based products and compare them under five main spectroscopic techniques: Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, circular dichroism (CD), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). This Review serves as a library of recent zein studies and helps readers to have a better perception of contradictions in the literature to take their studies one step further.
In this paper, a biodegradable gold
coated zein film surface enhanced
Raman spectroscopy (SERS) platform, with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs)
deposited on the surface to further enhance the Raman signal, was
used to detect pyocyanin (PYO), the toxin secreted by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. An inverted pyramid structure
imprinted on a zein film and gold coated during the transfer process
was further improved with the deposition and fixing of gold nanoparticles,
which resulted in enhancement of the SERS signal by approximately
a decade. This new platform served as a lab-on-a-chip sensor to enable
the sensitive and rapid detection of PYO in drinking water. The size,
distribution, and morphology of the zein film nanostructures including
the presence and distribution of gold nanoparticles were characterized
by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The new zein-based platform
has the advantage of being largely biodegradable compared with commercial
silicon- or glass-based platforms. The limit of detection for PYO
using the newly developed zein-based SERS sensor platform was calculated
as 25 μM, considerably lower than the concentration of PYO in
the blood of people with cystic fibrosis which has been reported to
be 70 μM.
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