Study: Compounds found in red wine and green tea used in new coatings

A simple kitchen sink experiment helped Northwestern University researchers discover that green tea leaves make an excellent antibacterial coating. And so can red wine, dark chocolate and cacao beans, they found. It’s the powerful and healthful polyphenols at work in a new way. Polyphenols are sticky, and the researchers exploited this useful property, while also retaining some of the compounds’ well-known biological properties. They made new multifunctional coatings based on tannic acid and pyrogallol -- inexpensive compounds resembling the more complex polyphenols found in tea, wine and chocolate.
Simply dissolving polyphenol powder in water with the proper dash of salt quickly produces colorless coatings that have antioxidant properties, are non-toxic and can kill bacteria on contact. The coatings -- which can stick to virtually anything, including Teflon -- could be used on a wide range of consumer, industrial and medical products, including materials used in food processing, packaging and preparation. An article about the study was published in the journal Angewandte Chemie (News Item Northwestern University, 22 August 2013).
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