Recent Developments in Artificial Super-Wettable Surfaces Based on Bioinspired Polymeric Materials for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Inspired by nature, significant research efforts have been made to discover the diverse range of biomaterials for various biomedical applications such as drug development, disease diagnosis, biomedical testing, therapy, etc. Polymers as bioinspired materials with extreme wettable properties, such as superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces, have received considerable interest in the past due to their multiple applications in anti-fogging, anti-icing, self-cleaning, oil–water separation, biosensing, and effective transportation of water. Apart from the numerous technological applications for extreme wetting and self-cleaning products, recently, super-wettable surfaces based on polymeric materials have also emerged as excellent candidates in studying biological processes. In this review, we systematically illustrate the designing and processing of artificial, super-wettable surfaces by using different polymeric materials for a variety of biomedical applications including tissue engineering, drug/gene delivery, molecular recognition, and diagnosis. Special attention has been paid to applications concerning the identification, control, and analysis of exceedingly small molecular amounts and applications permitting high cell and biomaterial cell screening. Current outlook and future prospects are also provided.