Sprecher
Beschreibung
Neutrons, by virtue of their non-destructive non-ionising nature, can provide a statistical and 3-dimensional perspective on structure in a range of model and industrial systems. Dairy gels, where the formation of a network of casein micelles from milk forms a barrier to mass transport, are the basis of major class food products manufactured from. Herein we follow on from our previous work examining the link between the mechanical properties of these gels and structure of the underlying fractal network [1]. The Bonse-Hart ultra-small angle neutron scattering (USANS) technique at the instrument KOOKABURRA (ANSTO, Australia) [2] utilizes two-channel cut (111) Si crystals to provide extremely good angular resolution of scattered neutrons in the horizontal direction but poor resolution in the vertical direction. KOOKABURRA provides well normalized slit smeared scattered intensity over a range of scattering vectors, 3 x 10$^{-5}$ Å$^{-1}$ < q < 0.01 Å$^{-1}$. In the present work, we exploit the non-ionizing technique to probe the formation of milk gels in-situ by actively metabolizing microbial systems, and modelling the slit-smeared scattered intensity with the network model of fractal aggregation by Teixeira [3]. We discuss the formation of a gel network and the broader application of this approach to food gels.
References:
[1] Ramya K. A., F. Boue, M. Strobl, L. de Campo, and C. Garvey, Manuscript in Preparation, 2024.
[2] Rehm, C., L. de Campo, A. Brule, F. Darmann, F. Bartsch, and A. Berry, Journal of Applied Crystallography 51 (1), 1-8, 2018.
[3] Teixeira, J., Journal of applied crystallography 21 (6), 781-785, 1988.
