Application of Atomic Force Microscopy as a Nanotechnology Tool in Food Science

Abstract

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) provides a method for detecting nanoscale structural information. First, this review explains the fundamentals of AFM, including principle, manipulation, and analysis. Applications of AFM are then reported in food science and technology research, including qualitative macromolecule and polymer imaging, complicated or quantitative structure analysis, molecular interaction, molecular manipulation, surface topography, and nanofood characterization. The results suggested that AFM could bring insightful knowledge on food properties, and the AFM analysis could be used to illustrate some mechanisms of property changes during processing and storage. However, the current difficulty in applying AFM to food research is lacking appropriate methodology for different food systems. Better understanding of AFM technology and developing corresponding methodology for complicated food systems would lead to a more in-depth understanding of food properties at macromolecular levels and enlarge their applications. The AFM results could greatly improve the food processing and storage technologies.

Spatial and Temporal Variability of Soil CO2 Flux in Sugarcane Green Harvest Systems

“…Epron et al (2004), when studying CO 2 emissions from soil cultivated with eucalyptus, concluded that the bivariate model, including soil temperature and moisture, did not explain the temporal variations in CO 2 emission; the univariate model, with the use of soil moisture, was more efficient. Besides soil moisture and temperature, FCO 2 in SG-5 presented an indirect relationship with air-filled pore space of R 2 = 0.73 to SG-5 and R 2 = 0.51 to SG-10 ( Figure 4e) and this may be related to the stimulation of microbial activity, which was promoted by higher soil moisture and had a great influence on FCO 2 (Davidson and Swank, 1986), especially in the rainy period, when AFPS was lower than in the dry period.…”

Instrumental approach toward understanding nano-pollutants

“…The measurement of average particle size is based on a number average, and also the size distribution depends on the number of measured particles. Therefore, it is important to analyze enough particles to obtain statistically significant results [7,26,61,127,128,132,144]. Satpati et al worked on synthesis and investigation of nano-crystalline materials of the tobacco sample and its ash using high-resolution TEM and related techniques.…”

Scientific basis of nanotechnology, implications for the food sector and future trends

“…In addition to more conventional ones, i.e., LMs e bright field and polarized LM, fluorescence microscopy, CLSM (Dufour, 2011;El-Bakry & Sheehan, 2014;Sheen, Bao, & Cooke, 2008;van de Velde, van Riel, & Tromp, 2002), EFLM (Peighambardoust, Dadpour, & Dokouhaki, 2010) e and EMs e SEM and TEM (El-Bakry & Sheehan, 2014), cryo-SEM and cryo-TEM, STEM, ESEM and ASEM, EDX spectroscopy and microanalysis (Gatti, Tossini, Gambarelli, Montanari, & Capitani, 2009;B. James, 2009), also SPM techniques -AFM, SNOM, STM (Liu & Cheng, 2011;H. Yang et al, 2007) e have been put forward and are being increasingly applied for nanocharacterization of food.…”

“…Due to its relatively wide diffusion and straightforward sample preparation, AFM is the most widely used SPM technique in food-related studies (Liu & Cheng, 2011;H. Yang et al, 2007).…”