Ammonia gas diffusion basis for inexpensive colour-changing food freshness label. Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
Ever rummaged through the fridge and wondered, ’Is this meat still ok to eat?’ A cheap colour-changing label can now help answer this question.
Most commercial indicators that help customers evaluate their food’s freshness, such as MonitorMark and Timestrip, are expensive to manufacture or must to be stored at very low temperatures in order to prevent them from going off before being placed on the food. A new indicator developed by Andrew Mills and his team at Queen’s University Belfast, UK, overcomes these problems as it is made from very cheap materials, can be stored at room temperature, and activated when and where it’s needed.
Read the full story by Abigail Hallowes in Chemistry World.
This article is free to access until 25 January 2017.
A. Mills et al, Chem. Commun., 2016, 52, 13987. DOI: 10.1039/C6CC07906G
