The migration of antioxidant (AO) agents, carvacrol and thymol, from polypropylene (PP) packaging films containing the studied compounds at 80 g/kg separately and an equimolar mixture of them into food simulants was investigated. Fast and reliable analytical procedures were developed and validated for the analysis of the studied AOs in food simulants. For aqueous food simulants, solid phase extraction followed by GC–MS analysis was performed. Fatty food simulants were directly analysed by GC–MS and HPLC-UV for isooctane and ethanol 950 mL/L, respectively. The release of AOs from the films was dependent on the type of food stimulant and AO incorporated. In particular, high levels of migration were obtained for both AOs into isooctane, showing thymol higher migration. The release kinetics of AOs from PP films showed a Fichian behaviour with diffusion coefficients ranging from 1 to 2 × 10−14 m2/s; except for the diffusion into isooctane where 4-6 higher values were obtained. The antioxidant activity of migration extracts was confirmed by the DPPH method, showing thymol a higher antioxidant capacity especially into isooctane with a 42.2% of inhibition. The obtained results suggest that carvacrol and thymol show a potential use as AOs for active packaging for extending the shelf-life of food products.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MAT-2011-28640-C02-01). Marina Ramos would like to thank University of Alicante (Spain) for UAFPU2011-48539721S predoctoral research grant

Nanosponges are solid cross-linked polymeric nano-sized porous structures. This broad concept involves, among others, metal organic frameworks and hydrogels. The focus of this manuscript is on cyclodextrin-based nanosponges. Cyclodextrins are cyclic oligomers of glucose derived from starch. The combined external hydrophilicity with the internal hydrophobic surface constitute a unique “microenvironment”, that confers cyclodextrins the peculiar ability to form inclusion host‒guest complexes with many hydrophobic substances. These complexes may impart beneficial modifications of the properties of guest molecules such as solubility enhancement and stabilization of labile guests. These properties complemented with the possibility of using different crosslinkers and high polymeric surface, make these sponges highly suitable for a large range of applications. Despite that, in the last 2 decades, cyclodextrin-based nanosponges have been developed for pharmaceutical and biomedical applications, taking advantage of the nontoxicity of cyclodextrins towards humans. This paper provides a critical and timely compilation of the contributions involving cyclodextrins nanosponges for those areas, but also paves the way for other important applications, including water and soil remediation and catalysis.

Covalent Organic Frameworks (COFs) are an exciting new class of microporous polymers with unprecedented properties in organic material chemistry. They are generally built from rigid, geometrically defined organic building blocks resulting in robust, covalently bonded crystalline networks that extend in two or three dimensions. By strategically combining monomers with specific structures and properties, synthesized COF materials can be fine-tuned and controlled at the atomic level, with unparalleled precision on intrapore chemical environment; moreover, the unusually high pore accessibility allows for easy post-synthetic pore wall modification after the COF is synthesized. Overall, COFs combine high, permanent porosity and surface area with high thermal and chemical stability, crystallinity and customizability, making them ideal candidates for a myriad of promising new solutions in a vast number of scientific fields, with widely varying applications such as gas adsorption and storage, pollutant removal, degradation and separation, advanced filtration, heterogeneous catalysis, chemical sensing, biomedical applications, energy storage and production and a vast array of optoelectronic solutions. This review attempts to give a brief insight on COF history, the overall strategies and techniques for rational COF synthesis and post-synthetic functionalization, as well as a glance at the exponentially growing field of COF research, summarizing their main properties and introducing the numerous technological and industrial state of the art applications, with noteworthy examples found in the literature.