Tannic Acid-Aminated Sugar Beet Pectin Nanoparticles as a Stabilizer of High-Internal-Phase Pickering Emulsions

Pickering stabilizers with additional antioxidant, photostabilizing, and metal-chelating properties are suitable for structuring multifunctional Pickering emulsion systems. Tannic acid (TA) is a potential material which when adsorbed onto the interface may impart antioxidant, UV-light-shielding, and chelating properties to Pickering stabilizers. Herein, we report a type of TA polyelectrolyte nanoparticles (NPs) fabricated following a complexation between TA and aminated sugar beet pectin (SBP-NH2). This study is geared toward investigating the performance of TA/SBP-NH2 NPs in stabilizing Pickering emulsions and protecting beta carotene from degradation. TA/SBP-NH2 NPs formed under optimum conditions had a mean diameter of 82 nm with a sphere-like shape. Because of their favorable surface wettability (91.2 degrees), TA/SBP-NH2 NPs promoted formation of the low-, medium-, and highinternal-phase Pickering emulsions (HIPEs) in an oil volume fraction (9)-dependent manner; the TA/SBP-NH2 NP-stabilized HIPE demonstrated viscoelastic properties increasing with the increasing concentration (c) of nanoparticles. Due to the excellent storage stability and UV light-absorbing capacity, the photostability of beta-carotene was significantly improved by a TA/SBP-NH2 NPstabilized HIPE (9 = 0.75; c = 3 mg/mL). Altogether, this study highlights that TA/SBP-NH2 NPs have potential applications in structuring Pickering emulsions with improved protective effects on loaded lipophilic compounds.

Automated summary

This study reports the fabrication of tannic acid polyelectrolyte nanoparticles (TA/SBP-NH2 NPs) and their potential applications in stabilizing Pickering emulsions and protecting beta carotene from degradation. The TA/SBP-NH2 NPs showed favorable surface wettability and increased viscoelastic properties with increasing concentration, resulting in improved photostability of beta-carotene.