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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Sébastien Marze

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Guest Editor

French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food & Environment (INRAE), Nantes, France
Interests: lipid; lipophilic compounds; emulsion; digestion; release; droplet microfluidics; lab-on-a-chip

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

About 15 years ago, microfluidics entered the age of applications, ranging from bottom-up structure formation or even high-throughput production to lab-on-a-chip chemical analysis or bioassay. Many such approaches reached a degree of precision and control never obtained before, making microfluidics promising for both research and innovation. More recently, in the food and nutrition field, many microfluidic developments and applications were undertaken. This encompassed the assembly and production of food and encapsulation systems using one or several nutrients, and the study of their stability, contamination, and release in various environments, using combined analytical methods. More precisely, this included structures formation (droplets, bubbles, microgels…), structural stability, oxidative stability, food and contaminant analysis, food digestion, and nutrient bioaccessibility, cellular uptake, and interaction with gut microbiota.

In view of these recent microfluidic advances in the food science community, we are putting together a Special Issue about “Microfluidics for Food and Nutrient Applications”, to be published in Micromachines (MDPI). Both microfluidic production and lab-on-a-chip analysis approaches are welcome, as long as they bring advantages over comparable conventional methods.

Dr. Sébastien Marze
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Micromachines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Structures
Colloids
Stability
Oxidation
Contaminants
Digestion
Bioaccessibility
Release
cellular uptake
Lab-on-a-chip
Analysis

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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27 pages, 14298 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Towards High Throughput Structuring of Liquid Foams in Microchannels: Effect of Geometry, Flowrate and Formulation

by Julian Sepulveda, Agnès Montillet, Dominique Della Valle, Catherine Loisel and Alain Riaublanc

Micromachines 2021, 12(11), 1415; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12111415 - 18 Nov 2021

Viewed by 1557

Abstract

This work is part of a study aiming to design a high-throughput foaming microsystem. The main focused field of application is the food industry. With the objective of improving the design of the microdevice, the effects of the geometry and the nature of the liquid base are presently investigated through visualizations of the flow typology of bubbles trains, aiming to expand the knowledge on key parameters that lead to an improved gas breakup. The tested set of conditions is not encountered in traditional microfluidics systems: i.e., throughputs up to 19 L·h⁻¹ for the liquid phase, process velocities around 20 m·s⁻¹ and flow of complex fluids. The behavior of solutions based on xanthan gum (XG) and whey proteins (WPI) is compared to that of solutions containing one of these ingredients or other ones (caseinates, glycerol). The structural and end-used properties of the final foams, namely the bubble diameter and rheological behavior, are evaluated. The incorporation of XG induces bubble shape stabilization even at the highest shear rates (~10⁵ s⁻¹) encountered in the mixing channel. “Controlled” interfacial breakup by tip-streaming or binary breakup are only observed with the WPI/XG biopolymers. This study indubitably highlights the essential role of the process/formulation interaction in the development of structural and functional properties of food foams when using microfluidics at high throughput. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics for Food and Nutrient Applications)

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Review

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27 pages, 6347 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperEditor’s ChoiceReview

Droplet Microfluidics for Food and Nutrition Applications

by Karin Schroen, Claire Berton-Carabin, Denis Renard, Mélanie Marquis, Adeline Boire, Rémy Cochereau, Chloé Amine and Sébastien Marze

Micromachines 2021, 12(8), 863; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12080863 - 23 Jul 2021

Cited by 33 | Viewed by 7815

Abstract

Droplet microfluidics revolutionizes the way experiments and analyses are conducted in many fields of science, based on decades of basic research. Applied sciences are also impacted, opening new perspectives on how we look at complex matter. In particular, food and nutritional sciences still have many research questions unsolved, and conventional laboratory methods are not always suitable to answer them. In this review, we present how microfluidics have been used in these fields to produce and investigate various droplet-based systems, namely simple and double emulsions, microgels, microparticles, and microcapsules with food-grade compositions. We show that droplet microfluidic devices enable unprecedented control over their production and properties, and can be integrated in lab-on-chip platforms for in situ and time-resolved analyses. This approach is illustrated for on-chip measurements of droplet interfacial properties, droplet–droplet coalescence, phase behavior of biopolymer mixtures, and reaction kinetics related to food digestion and nutrient absorption. As a perspective, we present promising developments in the adjacent fields of biochemistry and microbiology, as well as advanced microfluidics–analytical instrument coupling, all of which could be applied to solve research questions at the interface of food and nutritional sciences. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics for Food and Nutrient Applications)

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