Future smart labels are expected to tell you if the food is deteriorating

Recently, scientists from Clarkson University in the United States have developed a low-cost, portable, paper-based sensor that not only detects food spoilage or contamination, but also detects harmful substances in cosmetics. It can identify new types of medicinal plants in remote mountain forests and even identify tea and wine.

In recent years, food safety has received more and more attention from the society. However, for food inspections, professionals are generally required, as well as special laboratory equipment. This is not only inconvenient, but also costly. As a result, scientists are working hard to study low-cost, portable sensors that can be used to detect food spoilage or contamination.

Innovation

Recently, Dr. Silvana Andreescu and her colleagues at Clarkson University in the United States have developed a low-cost, portable, paper-based sensor that can not only detect foods, but also detect harmful substances in cosmetics, and identify new types of wood in remote mountains. Medicinal plants can even identify tea and wine. In addition to the wide range of uses of this type of sensor, it is even more important that the user can easily read the test results.

technology

Andreescu claims that her sensors differ from other sensors in that they use special nanostructures that capture and bind to the compounds they are looking for. she says:

“A lot of people are studying similar sensors that will guide the solution to the pipeline. And we use stable inorganic particles that have redox activity. When they interact with the substances we want to detect, their color Changes will occur, and changes in intensity will tell us the concentration of the analyte."

In addition, because the device integrates all the reagents needed on a single sheet of paper, the user does not need to add any other substances when the sample is tested.

The application of this sensor is very broad. For example, to this end, most of her work on sensors has focused on detecting antioxidants in tea and wine. She and her colleagues discovered that these products have unique antioxidant “fingerprints” that can be used for special identification purposes. She pointed out that researchers can also use these portable sensors to explore remote areas, such as the Amazon rainforest, looking for natural sources of antioxidants.

Recently, Andreescu expanded her research to detect contaminants in food and the environment. She designed a sensor prototype that can identify ochratoxin A. Ochratoxin A is a mycotoxins commonly found in a number of products such as cereals and coffee. She is ready to further expand in this direction, looking for salmonella and E. coli.

Now, her team is moving research to another direction and developing paper-based devices. The color of these devices will change with the deterioration of cosmetics and food. These sensors are bound to reactive oxygen species, which accumulate as the food ages and eventually spoils. This test is still in progress.

value

As mentioned earlier, the greatest value of this innovative technology is portable and low cost, and it can carry out a variety of tests.

In the future, this technology is expected to be integrated into smart labels and combined with the Internet of Things technology to enable real-time detection of food, cosmetics and other products. We are expected to promptly learn whether the food has spoiled through the application on the smartphone so that we can promptly discard the bad food.

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