About
one-third of the world’s food is lost and wasted each
year, along with excessive carbon emission, disposals, and other environmental
issues. The rotting of perishable products like fruits and vegetables
accounts for the largest percentage of food waste due to their short
shelf life. The storage atmosphere (H2O, O2,
CO2) acts as a key role in the preservation process and
could regulate plants’ physiological metabolism and microbial
growth. In this work, a facile and biomimetic strategy is introduced
for food preservation at room temperature employing PLLA (poly(l-lactic acid)) or chitosan porous microspheres as gas “switches”
or “stomata” in a shellac membrane to regulate O2, CO2, and H2O permeability and CO2/O2 selectivity. Surface coatings on fruits or
packaging films prepared through this strategy show exceptional preservation
performance on five selected model fruits with different respiratory
metabolisms. These hybrid materials could effectively control the
gases (O2, CO2, and H2O) permeability
and CO2/O2 selectivity by adding different amounts
of porous microspheres or depositing small functional molecules, which
demonstrate excellent antioxidant, antimicrobial, water-resistant,
and reusable properties. This gas permeation control strategy has
great potential in food preservation as well as other applications
where a controlled atmosphere is required.
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