Food Packaging Bionanocomposites

Dear colleagues,

Recent developments in nanoscience and nanotechnology are impacting the food industry more and more. In particular, research on innovative food packaging materials is receiving great attention as a powerful tool to extend the shelf life of food products, preserve their characteristics, improve food safety, and reduce food waste due to spoilage. Active packaging and intelligent packaging are new concepts, born from a deeper understanding of the interactions between food and its environment: packaging is endowed with properties not only able to preserve food quality, but also to monitor its status and warn about problems.

This Special Issue is devoted to the development of bio-based nanocomposites to be used in food packaging applications. The term “bionanocomposite” refers to nanocomposites including a naturally occurring polymer (biopolymer) mixed with inorganic solids and exhibiting at least one dimension on the nanometer scale. Such hybrid materials are designed to be invaluable for their environmental sustainability and for the multifunctional properties they can exhibit, such as biodegradability, antimicrobial activity, mechanical and thermal characteristics, and high barrier properties against the diffusion of oxygen, carbon dioxide, flavor compounds, and water vapor. For this Special Issue, we invite contributions on innovative preparation and processing technologies to obtain bio-based polymer nanocomposites with enhanced food packaging performance, as well as different characterization approaches and application cases.

Full-size articles, short communications, and reviews are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Sabbatini Luigia
Dr. Nicoletta Ditaranto
Guest Editors

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Nanomaterials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2400 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.