With the increasing number of surgical bone grafts per year, the application of biomaterials in tissue engineering has become a popular issue. In the present work, the potential of biocellulose-nanofibre-reinforced polyurethane nanocomposites to act as bone scaffold implants is established. Investigating properties of polyurethane shows that this widely applied biomaterial group cannot fulfil all properties required for bone implants in a stand-alone fashion. Bone implants require a high Young's modulus and tensile strength but low strain which makes it difficult to find a suitable polyurethane since higher hard segment content will reduce tensile strength and lower hard segment content will reduce the Young's modulus. Other factors such as biodegradation also become important. A literature review on carbon nanotube and nanofibre composites with polyurethanes shows that nanofibrous reinforcement leads to favourable implant properties. Young's modulus and tensile strength increase dramatically. Other properties such as thermal conductivity and viscosity are also affected. These types of nanofibrous materials, however, are the subject of an ongoing debate about toxicity and their use in bone implants is questionable. Biocellulose nanofibres formed from bacteria (also called bacterial cellulose (BC)) possess favourable mechanical properties and are highly biocompatible. A survey on works done on BC nanofibres and their composites show that nanostructured biocomposites that contains the nanofibres reinforced in polymer composites result in changes that are comparable to those of carbon nanotubes in regards to bone scaffold applications. Showing improvement on biocompatibility and mechanical properties, biocellulose nanofibre reinforcement on polyurethanes possesses strong potential for bone implants and other tissue-engineering applications.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.