Soft gliadin nanoparticles at air/water interfaces: The transition from a particle-laden layer to a thick protein film

Dengfeng Peng; Jack Yang; Anteun de Groot; Weiping Jin; Qianchun Deng; Bin Li; Leonard M C Sagis

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2024.04.196

Soft gliadin nanoparticles at air/water interfaces: The transition from a particle-laden layer to a thick protein film

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2024 Apr 28:669:236-247. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2024.04.196. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Dengfeng Peng¹, Jack Yang², Anteun de Groot², Weiping Jin³, Qianchun Deng⁴, Bin Li⁵, Leonard M C Sagis⁶

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Oilseeds Processing, Ministry of Agriculture, Hubei Research Center of Oil and Plant Protein Engineering Technology, Oil Crops Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, 430062, PR China; Laboratory of Physics and Physical Chemistry of Foods, Wageningen University, Bornse Weilanden 9, 6708WG Wageningen, the Netherlands; College of Food Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, PR China.
² Laboratory of Physics and Physical Chemistry of Foods, Wageningen University, Bornse Weilanden 9, 6708WG Wageningen, the Netherlands.
³ School of Food Science and Engineering, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430023, PR China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Oilseeds Processing, Ministry of Agriculture, Hubei Research Center of Oil and Plant Protein Engineering Technology, Oil Crops Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, 430062, PR China.
⁵ College of Food Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430070, PR China.
⁶ Laboratory of Physics and Physical Chemistry of Foods, Wageningen University, Bornse Weilanden 9, 6708WG Wageningen, the Netherlands. Electronic address: leonard.sagis@wur.nl.

PMID: 38718577
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2024.04.196

Abstract

Hypothesis: Protein-based soft particles possess a unique interfacial deformation behavior, which is difficult to capture and characterize. This complicates the analysis of their interfacial properties. Here, we aim to establish how the particle deformation affects their interfacial structural and mechanical properties.

Experiments: Gliadin nanoparticles (GNPs) were selected as a model particle. We studied their adsorption behavior, the time-evolution of their morphology, and rheological behavior at the air/water interface by combining dilatational rheology and microstructure imaging. The rheology results were analyzed using Lissajous plots and quantified using the recently developed general stress decomposition (GSD) method.

Finding: Three distinct stages were revealed in the adsorption and rearrangement process. First, spherical GNPs (∼105 nm) adsorbed to the interface. Then, these gradually deformed along the interface direction to a flattened shape, and formed a firm viscoelastic 2D solid film. Finally, further stretching and merging of GNPs at the interface resulted in rearrangement of their internal structure to form a thick film with lower stiffness than the initial film. These results demonstrate that the structure of GNPs confined at the interface is controlled by their deformability, and the latter can be used to tune the properties of prolamin particle-based multiphase systems.

Keywords: Air/water interface; Atomic force microscopy; General stress decomposition; Gliadin; Interfacial microstructure; Lissajous plots; Nonlinear interfacial rheology; Particle deformation/flattening; Soft particle.