New advances of electrospun starch fibers, encapsulation, and food applications: A review

Background Starch is a biodegradable, renewable, low-cost, and biocompatible carbohydrate. Such characteristics make this polymer suitable for applications in various fields, such as the fabrication of nanomaterials. Electrospinning is used to produce fibers with a high surface area-to-volume ratio and allows the encapsulation of bioactive compounds. This method broadens the range of applications of fibers in food industries, in the form of food additives or food packaging. Scope and approach Studies on starch electrospun fibers are recent in the literature. Based on this, we have gathered most of the studies found and approached the type of starch, polymeric solution, electrospinning configurations, fibers properties, and fabrication challenges. The search was carried out in the WoS database using the keywords “electrospinning” and “starch”. A bibliometric study was utilized to evaluate the publications, the most co-occurring keywords, and the recent and future trends in the publications focusing on food products. Key findings and conclusions Bibliometrics gathered several studies on the use of starch for the formation of fibers, and only a few apply starches as the encapsulating material. Starch can be successfully used to manufacture fibers by electrospinning. Research using starch as the only polymer or together with regular amylose content polymers is recent. Further investigation is required, as well as studies on the use of electrospun starch fibers to encapsulate bioactive compounds. The fabrication of double-layer fiber mats is a future trend, as it allows the addition of different functionalities of bioactive compounds encapsulated into the electrospun fibers, enabling their application in active and intelligent packaging.