ABSTRACT
Metal-polymer hybrid or composite nanoparticles (NPs) are particularly attractive for biological and medical applications for several reasons: (i) NPs exhibit higher surface areas than bulk materials do, thus providing more surface reactive groups to attach biomolecules and drugs for achieving property enhancements, (ii) their reduced and controlled size allows them to travel inside the living organism without functional NPs alteration, (iii) their properties strongly depend on their size and (iv) they offer the possibility of combining complementary properties in the same nanoobject; for example, the same type of particle could contain bioactive molecules and/or magnetic materials.
