Natural Polymer Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Natural polymers include numerous materials that are mainly produced by plants and animals, such as structural proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids. Protein materials commonly used in composites include silk, keratin, soy, collagen, gelatin, resilin, corn zein, and wheat gluten. Polysaccharides are constructed from monomeric sugars that are linked together by glycosidic linkages and can store materials, compose structural components, and act as protective materials. Typical polysaccharides include starch, cellulose, pectin, alginates, chitin, chitosan, and hyaluronic acid found in plants, algae or animals. Nucleic acids are long linear or circular macromolecules composed of linked nucleotides, DNA or various types of RNA. They are a rapidly expanding class of materials and have been of interest in recent decades due to their abundance, low cost, biocompatibility, and tunable morphological and physicochemical properties. Natural supramolecular structures from these renewable sources have shown broad applicatons in the development of membranes, foams, fibers, particles, gels and composites for nanotechnology, bioelectronics, oil and gas separation, removal of radionuclides, sensing, for the fabrication of scaffolds for cartilage, muscle, neural and bone regeneration, and for the creation of nanostructures for drug delivery.

The aim of this Special Issue is to discuss their design, synthesis, manufacturing, characterization or modeling, and their unique physical, chemical, and biomedical applications. We cordially invite you to contribute to this themed issue. Both original research and review articles are highly welcome.

Dr. Xiao Hu
Prof. Dr. David Salas-De La Cruz
Guest Editors

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