Bionanocomposites: A New Concept of Ecological, Bioinspired, and Functional Hybrid Materials

TLDR

Bionanocomposites are nanostructured hybrid materials that combine natural polymers with inorganic solids, yielding enhanced structural and functional properties while offering biocompatibility, biodegradability, and potential for regenerative medicine and green materials, thereby establishing a new interdisciplinary field linked to biomineralization, bioinspired, and biomimetic systems. The study aims to develop novel multifunctional bionanocomposites by synergistically assembling biopolymers with inorganic nanometer‑sized solids.

Abstract

Abstract Bionanocomposites represent an emerging group of nanostructured hybrid materials. They are formed by the combination of natural polymers and inorganic solids and show at least one dimension on the nanometer scale. Similar to conventional nanocomposites, which involve synthetic polymers, these biohybrid materials also exhibit improved structural and functional properties of great interest for different applications. The properties inherent to the biopolymers, that is, biocompatibility and biodegradability, open new prospects for these hybrid materials with special incidence in regenerative medicine and in environmentally friendly materials (green nanocomposites). Research on bionanocomposites can be regarded as a new interdisciplinary field closely related to significant topics such as biomineralization processes, bioinspired materials, and biomimetic systems. The upcoming development of novel bionanocomposites introducing multifunctionality represents a promising research topic that takes advantage of the synergistic assembling of biopolymers with inorganic nanometer‐sized solids.