Novel Chili-shaped Device may Reveal Just How Hot That Pepper is

Novel chili pepper-shaped device containing a paper-based electrochemical sensor can be connected to a smartphone to know how much capsaicin is in hot pepper, reports a new study. The findings of the study are published in the journal ACS Applied Nano Materials.

While some people go out of their way to avoid the palate-singeing burn of capsaicin, the component that provides chili peppers their kick, some enjoy spicy food! The hotter, the better. Researchers have now developed a portable device that can reveal how much capsaicin a pepper contains before biting into it.

Exploring the Benefits of Chili Pepper - Health - Videos
Capsaicin has been studied for various medicinal properties including anti-coagulant effects. Chilli peppers and capsicums are rich in vitamin A, C and potassium and are extremely low on calories.

‘Capsaicin compound present in chili pepper is known to have several human health benefits, including anti-carcinogenic, anti-oxidative, and anti-inflammatory activities as well as anti-tumoral properties. ’
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Chili peppers are a widely popular food ingredient around the globe. In addition to giving a spicy flavor, the capsaicin in chili peppers has numerous health benefits, including anti-carcinogenic, anti-oxidative, and anti-inflammatory activities. Hence, the demand for capsaicin as a food additive and a pharmaceutical agent is growing.

Warakorn Limbut and associates wanted to develop a simple, reliable, and cheap method to quantify chili peppers and food samples' capsaicin content. Other ways developed for this purpose are complicated, time-consuming, or require costly, bulky instrumentation.

The researchers made a portable tool shaped like a small chili pepper that could be attached to a smartphone to present the analysis results. The paper-based electrochemical sensor within the tool consisted of graphene nanoplatelets doped with nitrogen atoms to enhance their electrical conductivity.

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When the team added a drop of diluted capsaicin to the sensor, the compound experienced oxidation and reduction reactions, producing an electrical current that the device identified. After optimizing the sensor, the researchers used it to discover capsaicin concentrations in six dried chili samples.

They added the chilies to an ethanol-containing solution, shook it up, and then added a sample drop. The device precisely measured capsaicin concentrations from 7.5-90 μM in the 6 samples and could detect down to 0.37 μM in the diluted samples.

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Source-Medindia

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