◾ Graphene-Based Polymer Composites for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

GNS, a single-atom-thick layer of sp2 hybridized carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, is the basic building block of other carbon allotropes including 0D fullerenes, 1D CNTs, and 3D graphite (Zhou et al., 2012). New GNS-based materials have profound impact in energy technology, sensors, catalysis, and bioscience/biotechnologies due to their unique physicochemical properties namely high surface area (2630 m2/g), excellent electrical conductivity (1738 S/m), strong mechanical strength (about 1100 GPa), unparalleled thermal conductivity (5000 W/m/K), and ease of functionalization (Yang et al., 2013a). ough, GNS was originally developed for nanoelectronics applications, it has received wider attention in constructing biosensors and loading drugs due to its excellent electrochemical and optical properties, as well as the capability to adsorb a variety of aromatic biomolecules through a π-π stacking interaction and/or electrostatic interaction (Kim et al., 2011; Labroo and Cui, 2013; Neelgund et al., 2013; Sattarahmady et al., 2013). Moreover, presence of the abundant oxygen-containing groups in the honeycomb structure of graphene oxide (GO) reacts with targeting ligands facilitating biofunctionalization, biocompatibility, and nontoxicity toward several cell lines, thus making it as suitable candidate for biomedical applications (Chen et al., 2012a), including bioassays (Cai et al., 2011), targeted bio-imaging (Deepachitra et al., 2013), drug delivery (Sun et al., 2008), and tissue engineering (Nayak et al., 2011; Goenka et al., 2014) (Figure 23.1).