Proteins are excellent polymeric materials for encapsulating essential oils (EOs) by electrospinning and electrospraying to protect these compounds and form nanomaterials with active properties. Proteins can encapsulate bioactive molecules by several mechanisms, including surface activity, absorption and stabilization mechanisms, amphiphilic nature, film-forming capacity, foaming, emulsification, and gelation, due to interactions among their functional groups. However, proteins have some limitations in encapsulating EOs by the electrohydrodynamic process. Their properties can be improved by using auxiliary polymers, increasing their charges by adding ionic salts or polyelectrolytes, denaturing their structure by heat, and exposure to specific pH conditions and ionic strength. This review addresses the main proteins used in electrospinning/electrospraying techniques, production methods, their interactions with EOs, bioactive properties, and applications in food matrices. Multivariate analysis associated with bibliometrics of metadata extracted from studies in Web of Science using the keywords electrospinning and essential oil (EO) were used as the search strategy.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2023.112970