Functional Nanomaterials for Smart Healthcare Applications

Abstract

Bacterial infections have become a major concern worldwide and is the center of genuine research efforts towards development of the functional system against microbial attachment. Sometimes infection associated issues become life-threatening for the patient due to bacterial growth within a biofilm matrix. These bacterial accumulation leads to inefficient use of conventional antibiotics and this fact emphasizes the development of new treatment strategies for the infection control. Various class of bioactive agents such as metal nanoparticles (NPs), antibiotics, herbal components and essential oils are available for this wide antimicrobial spectrum against all type of microbes. Despite the fact, each category of the bioactive agents has limitations such as lack of binding ability of metal NPs, bacterial resistant, low bioavailability and hydrophobicity of the agents. However, the most crucial challenge in front of researchers is the modification of bioactive agents and reduces their toxicity while using as biomaterials. Designing bioactive agents within nanomaterial confinement provides broad prospects to develop functional NPs which may be bonded to any biomaterial surface through nanogel functionality, either coated or blended with polymeric substrates/surfaces and make them antimicrobial. The aim of this book chapter is to present the current perspective, approaches and challenges on the design of functional and bioactive nanomaterials with diverse functionality, their bioactivity against a wide spectrum of microbes so that it leads to the development of bioactive materials for human healthcare.