Recent trends of micro and nanostructured conducting polymers in health and environmental applications

Abstract

Conducting polymers are, without question, outstanding materials. Their unique combination between metal-like, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties and the processability of polymeric materials consolidated their use in the electrochemical sciences over the past decades. However, the versatile character of these polymers combined with the advent of nanoscience has expanded their horizon of applications, now entering the fields of biomedicine and life science, as well as the environmental sciences. This review brings the latest advances on the use of conducting polymers micro and nanostructures in biomedical applications, such as controlled drug release, artificial muscles, and tissue engineering, where their stimuli responsiveness has shown new and exciting possibilities. Moreover, this review shows that the use of conducting polymers in effective extraction and pre-concentration of trace amount pollutants from complex matrices resulted in extraction capacities often superior to the materials currently commercialized. More than extracting contaminants, conducting polymers have shown further promissing results in the degradation of organic contaminants through photoelectrocatalysis. New features in the synthesis of these polymers are also addressed.