The Use of Nanoscaled Fibers or Tubes to Improve Biocompatibility and Bioactivity of Biomedical Materials

Nanofibers and nanotubes have recently gained substantial interest for potential applications in tissue engineering due to their large ratio of surface area to volume and unique microstructure. It has been well proved that the mechanical property of matrix could be largely enhanced by the addition of nanoscaled fibers or tubes. At present, more and more researches have shown that the biocompatibility and bioactivity of biomedical materials could be improved by the addition of nanofibers or nanotubes. In this review, the efforts using nanofibers and nanotubes to improve biocompatibility and bioactivity of biomedical materials, including polymeric nanofibers/nanotubes, metallic nanofibers/nanotubes, and inorganic nanofibers/nanotubes, as well as their researches related, are demonstrated in sequence. Furthermore, the possible mechanism of improving biocompatibility and bioactivity of biomedical materials by nanofibers or nanotubes has been speculated to be that the specific protein absorption on the nanoscaled fibers or tubes plays important roles.