Search

From farm to plate, food meets various challenges and pollution. Food detection is essential to ensure food safety. Although detection techniques have obtained great development, the accuracy, sensitivity and operating conditions still have room for improvement. Composed of dielectric media with different refractive indices to form a periodic structure, an optical material named photonic crystal (PC) can offer a breakthrough. Owing to the periodic structure, Bragg diffraction happens with optical waves propagating in a PC and photonic band gap (PBG), a characteristic parameter of the PC, will form. The properties of PBG are widely used in the field of detection. Combined with the techniques of biology, immunology, optics and fluorescence etc., PCs can play the role of specific, efficient, sensitive and convenient sensors in food detection. At present, PCs have been successfully applied to analyze hazardous substances in food, such as microorganisms, biotoxins, veterinary drug residues, pesticide residues, excessive additives, illegal additives, environmental pollutants and heavy metal composition. This article introduces PCs about the fabrication methods, principles and techniques applied in detection and research progress in food detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, developing rapid, simple, and effective new methods to monitor food safety is standing out enough to be noticed. Electrospinning is an easy, versatile, and low-cost technique to fabricate multifunctional micro-and nanomaterials. The combination of electrospinning and biosensors is one of the most promising strategies and is expected to replace traditional detection materials. This paper reviews the research progress of electrospinning in food detection, including electrospinning materials generally used in the food field with their benefits of high aspect ratio, large specific surface area, tunable porosity, easy functionalization, easy handling, mechanical stability, such as natural polymers, synthetic polymers or the mixture of both. Besides, we also emphatically introduced the application of their intrinsic characteristics combined with biosensing platforms and list the sensitivity and detection limit of various methods and materials in detection, as well as their application potential, and the challenges faced by the on-site detection and the large-scale commercial applications in the food industry as future exploration headings, giving new thinking of nanomaterial applications for food safety detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]