Novel water-resistant UV-activated oxygen indicator for intelligent food packaging

For the first time, alginate polymer has been applied to prevent dyes from leaching out of colorimetric oxygen indicator films, which enable people to notice the presence of oxygen in the package in an economic and simple manner. The dye-based oxygen indicator film suffers from dye leaching upon contact with water. In this work, UV-activated visual oxygen indicator films were fabricated using thionine, glycerol, P25 TiO2, and zein as a redox dye, a sacrificial electron donor, UV-absorbing semiconducting photocatalyst, and an encapsulation polymer, respectively. When this zein-coated film was immersed in water for 24 h, the dye leakage was as high as 80.80 ± 0.45%. However, introduction of alginate (1.25%) as the coating polymer considerably diminished the dye leaching to only 5.80 ± 0.06%. This is because the ion-binding ability of alginate could prevent the cation dye from leaching into water. This novel water-resistant UV-activated oxygen indicator was also successfully photo-bleached and regained colour fast in the presence of oxygen.

► We have applied alginate to solve the dye leaching problem of UV-activated oxygen indicators.
► Interaction of alginate with dye decreased the dye leakage dramatically.
► This novel oxygen indicator was photo-bleached and regained colour fast with oxygen.