Chapter 6 - Advanced nanobiomaterials in tissue engineering: Synthesis, properties, and applications

Abstract

Nanobiomaterials are materials with nanometer features that can mimic the dimensions of natural tissues or organs when compared to micron-sized materials, nanobiomaterials exhibit many superior properties including biocompatibility, mechanical, electrical, biodegradability, and optical. Thus, nanobiomaterials have been widely investigated as promising alternative materials for various biomedical and tissue engineering applications. Typically, the organic materials used to create nanocomposite biomaterials are either natural (bacterial cellulose nanofibers and collagen) or synthetic polymers, such as aliphatic polyester, while the most commonly used inorganic material are nanohydroxyapatite, silicate, and carbon nanotube. This chapter aims to bring together a wide variety of organic and inorganic materials combined in certain types of nanocomposite materials for tissue engineering applications. The material choices for the design of scaffolds using nanocomposite systems as well as the fabrication routes to their design are described in this chapter. Details of the processing techniques used to evaluate interfaces in tissue engineering nanocomposite scaffolds are provided.