Advanced applications of chitosan-based hydrogels: From biosensors to intelligent food packaging system

Background: As the only natural cationic polysaccharide, chitosan (CH) have several bioactivities. Moreover, CH was the ideal biomaterial for the preparation of hydrogels that have desirable biocompatibility and biodegradability. CH-based hydrogels have been extensively reported for their applications in delivery system and tissue engineering. Furthermore, CH-based hydrogels have shown great potential and attracted considerable attention in recent years for biosensors and packaging materials. Scope and approach: This review aims to discuss the favorable properties and advantage of CH-based hydrogels through introducing different types of CH-based hydrogels, and extend these properties to their application in biosensors. Finally, combining the above-mentioned advantages and characteristics (excellent bioactivities, stimuli responsiveness, embedding ability, swelling, biodegradability, non-toxicity, and low-cost), the potential of CH-based hydrogels for application in intelligent food packaging systems is analyzed. Key findings and conclusions: CH-based hydrogels, a hydrophilic, high-water content biomaterial, have a variety of applications, which are closely related to its excellent properties such as good swelling capacity and embedding ability. Different types of CH-based hydrogels have different working mechanism and extensive application prospect in delivery system and tissue engineering. Moreover, CH-based hydrogels can respond to external stimuli and convert environmental signal to a measurable signal output through its swelling behavior or embedding bioactive substance that can interact with an input element, which has been used as biosensors in various fields. Combining its favorable antibacterial, antioxidant activity and good biodegradability, CH-based hydrogels have great application potential in intelligent food packaging system.