CHAPTER 5. Applications of Conductive Materials for Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Electrical stimulation has been proven to be one of the most relevant cues to determine cell responses and tissue functionalities in many tissues of the human body, offering the opportunity for the design of electrically conductive biomaterials in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering applications. As such, conductive materials with high conductivity and excellent biocompatibility as well as suitable biodegradability are emerging as promising biomaterials for many biomedical applications. This chapter summarizes the most used conductive materials in biomedical engineering, including conductive polymers, piezoelectric polymeric materials, other novel conductive nanomaterials and self-assembled conductive hydrogels, as well as modification strategies to improve their biocompatibility and biodegradability for biomedical applications, together with their most recent achievements in nerve, bone, muscle and cardiac tissue engineering.