An overview on metal oxide incorporated bionanocomposites and their potential applications

Abstract

Bionanocomposites - nanocomposites with a polymer of biological origin and one or more fillers - are an important class of materials that has gained the attention of researchers over the last few decades. Combining biopolymer with nano fillers improves strength and permeability and prevents nanofiller from corrosion. Different methods, such as in-situ polymerization, melt intercalation, template synthesis, solution intercalation are employed for the incorporation of nanomaterials (either 1D, 2D or 3D) to the biopolymer matrix. The properties of bionanocomposites depend highly on the nanoparticles that have been incorporated to make them suitable for a wide variety of applications. Both polymers and metal oxide nanoparticles have proved to be good candidates in applications such as antimicrobial, food packaging, automotive pharmaceutical, drug delivery etc. Inserting metal oxide nanoparticles to biopolymer matrices improves their permeability, mechanical strength, elasticity and thermal stability and increases their potentiality. Herein, the different bionanocomposites containing oxides of metals such as Ni, Zn, Al, Mg, Cu, Ti along with their applications are being discussed.