Efficient fabrication, characterization, and in vitro digestion of aerogel-templated oleogels from a facile method: Electrospun short fibers

In this work, an innovative and convenient approach was induced to construct aerogel-templated oleogels (ATO), which were simply made of camellia oil and gelatin. The freeze-dried gelatin aerogel templates were developed from uniformly dispersed electrospun short fibers (GF), which were further immersed in camellia oil within 5 min to form ATO facilely. Compared with traditional gelatin hydrogel-based (GH) aerogels, GF aerogel templates presented different micromorphology, thermal stabilities, and significant changes on infrared spectrum and secondary structure, where GF exhibited stronger internal interactions than GH. In compression tests, GH aerogels possessed strong resistance to stress while GF aerogels exhibited surprising resilient abilities. In addition, the oil adsorption capacity (OAC) and oil holding capacity (OHC) of GF aerogel templates considerably reached 125.31 g/g and 79.40%, respectively. Oleogels with different preparing methods and gelatin content presented outstanding rheological properties and in vitro digestibility. This work suggested that gelatin ATO could be fabricated from not only hydrogels but also electrospun short fibers, which owned a more desired physical structure and oil-related properties. Meanwhile, the properties of GF and GH systems could be significantly affected by the concentration of the biopolymer.