Poly(3-Hydroxybutyrate-co-3-Hydroxyvalerate): Enhancement Strategies for Advanced Applications

Abstract

Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate- co -3-hydroxyvalerate), PHBV, is a microbial biopolymer with excellent biocompatible and biodegradable properties that make it a potential candidate for substituting petroleum-derived polymers. However, it lacks mechanical strength, water sorption and diffusion, electrical and/or thermal properties, antimicrobial activity, wettability, biological properties, and porosity, among others, limiting its application. For this reason, many researchers around the world are currently working on how to overcome the drawbacks of this promising material. This review summarises the main advances achieved in this field so far, addressing most of the chemical and physical strategies to modify PHBV and placing particular emphasis on the combination of PHBV with other materials from a variety of different structures and properties, such as other polymers, natural fibres, carbon nanomaterials, nanocellulose, nanoclays, and nanometals, producing a wide range of composite biomaterials with increased potential applications. Finally, the most important methods to fabricate porous PHBV scaffolds for tissue engineering applications are presented. Even though great advances have been achieved so far, much research needs to be conducted still, in order to find new alternative enhancement strategies able to produce advanced PHBV-based materials able to overcome many of these challenges.

Study of 1D and 2D Carbon Nanomaterial in Alginate Films

“…In this regard, very few material engineering approaches to enhance cell adhesion on alginate-based supports, such as alginate functionalization [8,9], have been successfully developed in the last decades. With respect to other biomaterials such as poly(hydroxy-3-butyrate-co-3-valerate) [10,11], the additions of low amounts (up to 1% w/w) of one-dimensional carbon nanofibers (CNFs) or two-dimensional graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets to produce advanced nanocomposites have also shown to be successful alternative strategies to enhance cell adhesion and proliferation. GO have also shown similar successful results in other important polymers such as polycaprolactone [12] and gelatin [13].…”

Acrylic-Based Materials for Biomedical and Bioengineering Applications

“…Polymer nanocomposites have significantly influenced the field of biomedicine. In this regard, graphenebased nanocomposites have been reported to enhance the physical and biological properties of a wide range of polymers of different chemical natures [24,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. Graphene (GN) is a 2D monolayer of sp 2 -bonded carbon atoms [54] very promising in a wide range of industrial fields due to its outstanding electrical and thermal properties [55,56] and high mechanical performance [57].…”

Effect of carbon nanotubes on the biodegradability of poly(3‐hydroxybutyrate‐co‐3‐hydroxyvalerate) nanocomposites

“…The reinforcement of biodegradable polymer matrixes with carbon nanotubes (CNT) has been widely studied in the literature . In these works, changes and improvements in the properties of nanocomposites have been proven to be dependent of CNT amount.…”

“…Few works have as primary objective the study of CNT effects and other nanoparticles in the final biodegradability or biodegradation process of these nanocomposites, although it is essential for their application . Lemes et al .…”