Abstract
To prevent the rapid microbial growth caused by unintended temperature abuse during the handling of cooked meat, such as malfunctioning hot-holding equipment or improper storage, this study developed a smart formulation that can be triggered by high temperature to release antibacterial agents on demand. A mixture of lauric acid and stearic acid was employed as the phase change material (PCM), and cinnamaldehyde (CA) was used as the active substance to fabricate this composite (CA/PCM). At 42 °C, CA/PCM can transit from a solid phase to a molten state, leading to the rapid release of embedded CA. In vitro experiments showed that, compared with the 25 °C group, the CA/PCM-42°C group reduced the colony counts of E. coli and S. aureus by 74.5% and 74.0%, respectively, and also decreased the biofilm absorbance by 92.75% and 82.08%, respectively. Compared with the samples stored at 25 °C, the inoculated meat stored at 42 °C for 24 h exhibited smaller changes in colour (∆E* < 3.5), hardness, pH, TVB-N, and MDA values. Moreover, the microbial counts remained below 5 log CFU·g-1. The results demonstrate that CA/PCM serves as an effective fail-safe strategy, providing targeted antimicrobial protection specifically under temperature-abuse conditions for the preservation of cooked meat.
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All the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its Supplementary Information files.
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No custom code was used or generated during this study. Statistical analyses were performed using the built-in tools of GraphPad Prism 9.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Macao FDCT Grants (0005/2024/AGJ and 0009/2023/AFJ) and the Science and Technology Foundation of Suzhou (2022SS25).
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Tong Wu: Writing—Original draft, Visualization, Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation. Yuhe Dong: Methodology, Investigation, Visualization. Wanying Zhu: Investigation, Visualization. Zesen Xie: Investigation, Visualization. Tao Jiang: Investigation. Xi Yu: Writing- Reviewing and Editing. Ying Xiao: Writing—review & editing. Siyao Sui: Resources. Tian Zhong: Writing—review & editing, Conceptualization, Project administration, Supervision.
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Wu, T., Dong, Y., Zhu, W. et al. Phase change material-based antibacterial nanoparticles for short-term preservation of cooked meat during temperature abuse. npj Sci Food (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-00808-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-026-00808-5
