Recent advances in chitosan-based materials; The synthesis, modifications and biomedical applications

Abstract

The attention to polymer-based biomaterials, for instance, chitosan and its derivatives, as well as the techniques for using them in numerous scientific domains, is continuously rising. Chitosan is a decomposable naturally occurring polymeric material that is mostly obtained from seafood waste. Because of its special ecofriendly, biocompatible, non- toxic nature as well as antimicrobial properties, chitosan-based materials have received a lot of interest in the field of biomedical applications. The reactivity of chitosan is mainly because of the amino and hydroxyl groups in its composition, which makes it further fascinating for various uses, including biosensing, textile finishing, antimicrobial wound dressing, tissue engineering, bioimaging, gene, DNA and drug delivery and as a coating material for medical implants. This study is an overview of the different types of chitosan-based materials which now a days have been fabricated by applying different techniques and modifications that include etherification, esterification, crosslinking, graft copolymerization and o-acetylation etc. for hydroxyl groups' processes and acetylation, quaternization, Schiff's base reaction, and grafting for amino groups' reactions. Furthermore, this overview summarizes the literature from recent years related to the important applications of chitosan-based materials (i.e., thin films, nanocomposites or nanoparticles, sponges and hydrogels) in different biomedical applications.