Effect of ultrasonic treatment on the morphology of casein particles.
In this study, the effect of ultrasonic treatment duration on the morphology of self-assembled casein particles was investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM), low vacuum scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). In the case of AFM images, the particle analysis which was carried out by the SPIP program showed that the self-assembled casein particles after being ultrasonically treated for 2 min got smaller in size compared to the casein particles that have not been exposed to any ultrasonic treatment. Surprisingly, however, increasing the ultrasonic time exposure of the particles resulted in an opposite effect where larger particles or aggregates seemed to be present. We show that by comparing the results obtained by AFM, SEM and TEM, the information extracted from the AFM images and analyzed by SPIP program give more detailed insights into particle sizes and morphology at the molecular level compared to SEM and TEM images, respectively.
School of Food & Biological Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China. Electronic address: linl@ujs.edu.cn.
Lin
L
Lin
Haiying
H
Cui
Ronghai
R
He
Lei
L
Liu
Cunshan
C
Zhou
Wael
W
Mamdouh
Haile
H
Ma
D000818:Animals; D002364:Caseins / Q000737:chemistry*; D002417:Cattle; D008853:Microscopy; D010316:Particle Size; D014465:Ultrasonics
D002364:Caseins
AFM; Casein; Morphology; Particle size; Ultrasonic treatment