ABSTRACT
Several medical based products or antimicrobial films derived from synthetic polymers are non-biodegradable in nature and are widely used. To overcome the problems of biodegradation, biopolymers derived from renewable resources are in great demand in this century. Few biopolymers such as polylactic acid (PLA), polyhydroxy alkanoates (PHAs), soy protein isolate (SPI) and bacterial cellulose (BC) fall under this category. This chapter will focus on two biopolymers that are SPI and BC. SPI are available in great abundance and BC can be fermented easily. However, these biopolymers are not antimicrobial in nature. Nanosized antimicrobial formulations based on SPI/BC could be used as effective bactericidal biopolymeric materials/films. Films from SPI come under the biological films and these films with the introduction of nanoparticles are being developed as a packaging material that can increase the shelf-life of the food. Nowadays, silver nanoparticles incorporated SPI films are used in various medical applications such as wound healing and dental applications. Impregnation of silver (Ag), titanium oxide (TiO2), zinc oxide (ZnO), and carbon dots (CDs) nanoparticles in BC or SPI results in the fabrication of medical compatible bionanocomposites having possible applications as a wound dressing scaffold as well as scaffold material in tissue engineering. This chapter will give an overview of incorporation of aforementioned nanoparticles in SPI and BC and its application as antimicrobial films and wound dressing materials.
