Research Progress on Starch-Based Fibrous Films: Electrospinning and Food Packaging

Abstract

Food packaging films effectively preserve food from adverse environmental factors (such as oxygen, water vapor, microorganisms, and light), thereby ensuring food quality and safety and extending its shelf life. Starch, a biodegradable biopolymer naturally produced by plants, has shown great potential in the development of environmental-friendly food packaging materials due to its advantages of low price, wide sources, renewability, and excellent film-forming properties. Compared with films prepared by casting and extrusion blowing, films composed of micro- or nanofibers exhibit higher specific surface area, porosity, and loading capacity, which have received considerable interest in the development of food packaging films. In this article, the principles and influential factors of the three major starch fiber preparation techniques including solution blow spinning, electrospinning, and centrifugal spinning are reviewed, and their advantages and disadvantages are compared. More importantly, the relationship between the structural changes of electrospun starch fibers caused by different physical and chemical modification methods and the packaging properties of modified starch fibers is analyzed. Finally, future prospects for the application of starch-based fiber films in food packaging are discussed.

Keywords

• starch; fibers; modification; structure; packaging properties