Bio-inspired Delivery Systems for Flavors and Fragrances

Most of the consumer goods that we use every day contain flavors to make them taste good or fragrances to make them smell clean and fresh. Flavors and fragrances are typically composed of dozens of organic molecules characterized by high volatility and in most cases, by limited water solubility. There is thus a need to make fragrances last longer, more particularly in home and body care applications involving their dilution or rinsing-off with water. Similarly, there is a need to protect flavors exposed to moisture, temperature or pH variations to extend their shelf-life in foods and beverages.
 A thorough understanding of the molecular fate of flavors and fragrances is thus a prerequisite to their hedonic performance when used. Furthermore, a broad range of formulation methodologies are available to solubilize or encapsulate flavors and fragrances and to enhance their performance in consumer goods of variable chemical composition or physical format. The challenge for formulation engineers is to develop delivery systems that are safe, affordable and sustainable. We show how design principles inspired by biological structures are leveraged to develop differentiating delivery systems.
 We first review how flavor and fragrance molecules are able to partition between water and oil and how their interfacial molecular packing is able to influence the phase behavior of consumer goods. We then show how this can be used to optimize the levels of surfactants needed to solubilize fragrances or to engineer multi-scale hierarchical structures with well-defined functionalities. We also illustrate how organic and inorganic building blocks can be combined to adjust the mechanical and mass transport properties of the resulting barrier materials. We finally highlight how the surface properties of these controlled-release systems can be modified to enhance their affinity towards inorganic substrates or biological ones like hair or skin.            
 
V. Tchakalova et al., (2014), Evaporation triggered self-assembly in aqueous fragrance–ethanol mixtures and its impact on fragrance performance, Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical & Engineering Aspects, 460, 414-421.
 
B. Duncan et al., (2015), Hybrid organic-inorganic colloid composite sponges via internal cross-linking, Small 11(11), 1302-1309.
 
K. A. Günay et al. (2017), Peptide enhanced selective surface deposition of polymer-based fragrance delivery systems, Advanced Functional Materials, 27(2), 1603847.
Bio: Daniel Benczédi obtained an engineering degree in Food Science and Technology in 1991 followed by a PhD in Materials Science in 1995 at the ETH in Zurich in the field of polymer physics and biopolymer processing. He has since spent his entire career in the flavor and fragrance industry working in Research & Development. The main topics of his research are soft matter physics and colloid chemistry for the engineering of delivery systems. He has an executive MBA obtained at the IMD in Lausanne in 2002. Since 2008, he is Vice President Materials Science at Firmenich SA in Geneva. Today, he is in charge of an international team located in three countries (Switzerland, United State, China).