ABSTRACT
During the past few decades, significant efforts have been made to design polymers with desired properties through new synthetic strategies involving a wide range of chemical reactions towards various applications. In particular, polymers possessing biocompatible and biodegradable features have been attracting enormous attention in multitude of biomedical applications. This is mainly due to structure, morphology, physical, chemical, surface, and biomimetic properties of a polymer, which play a major role in determining its specific applications in the biomedical field. In addition to this, the metal nanoparticles, which have been increasingly recognized as important doping material, are introduced into the polymer composites for enhanced antibacterial activities. In this review, development of various bionanocomposites derived from silver nanoparticles and polymers is discussed with regard to their potential application in the biomedical field. The nature of methodologies adopted to prepare metal nanoparticles-embedded polymers reveals the antibacterial activity of the resultant bionanocomposites. More fundamental investigation about the formation of nanoparticles, their interaction with the polymer matrix, and release rate of nanoparticles in the bacterial environment would be very useful in engineering the polymer nanocomposite systems with excellent antimicrobial activity and in future for the clinical applications in the biomedical field.
