Smart Polymers for Biomedical Applications: Challenges and Opportunities

Dear Colleagues,

Designing and manufacturing advanced biomaterials targeted at specific applications have become a major branch of biomaterial engineering. Nowadays, advanced biomaterials are the result of a combination of engineered biomaterials and manufacturing techniques. Therefore, advanced biomaterials of the current generation are multifunctional and multi-stimuli-responsive for targeted applications, which are named ‘smart biomaterials’. This term can be assigned to biomaterials capable of providing tissues or organs with a bewildering array of possible multifunctional advantages, such as controlled/on-demand therapeutics delivery, sense-and-treat platforms, molecular recognition and in situ biosensing, protecting wounds against infections, diagnosing diseases, patterning different features of diagnostic and/or therapeutic variabilities, etc. Correspondingly, a wide variety of biodegradable and renewable polymers have undergone innovative approaches for designing smart biomaterials, but bringing about advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, analysis of the synthesis, characterization, properties, and biomedical performance of smart biomaterials would aid their targeted applications. Moreover, developing additive manufacturing techniques (3D, 4D, 5D, and 6D printing methods) has additionally revolutionized the field of smart biomaterials, but at the same time brought about challenges of optimization of properties and performance. To highlight the necessity of collecting, analysing and sharing new ideas as well as integrating the results of surveys on advanced functional and smart biomaterials in biomedical applications, the journal of Polymers from MDPI invites experts to publish the results of their surveys and research works in this Special Issue. In order to obtain a wider window of possibility in brainstorming, communicating, and publishing the latest outcomes of researchers and scientists of this filed, we welcome original regular papers, review papers, perspectives, commentaries and short communications as possible kinds of contributions to this Special Issue.

The scope of the Special Issue includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:

• Synthesis of smart and multifunctional biomaterials;
• Characterization of smart and multifunctional biomaterials;
• Optimization of properties of smart and multifunctional biomaterials;
• Synthesis of stimuli-responsive polymers;
• Synthesis of cell-laden polymers;
• Smart and functional biomaterials based on biodegradable and renewable polymer blends;
• Smart and functional biomaterials based on biodegradable and renewable polymer composites and nanocomposites;
• Smart and functional biomaterials from reusability and recycling perspectives;
• Sustainability of smart and functional biomaterials;
• Circular economy of smart and functional biomaterials;
• Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of smart and functional biomaterials;
• Additive manufacturing of smart and functional biomaterials;
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) for developing smart and functional biomaterials;
• Machine Learning (ML) for developing smart and functional biomaterials;
• Metaverse for future development of smart and functional biomaterials.

Dr. Mohsen Khodadadi Yazdi
Dr. Payam ZarrinTaj
Dr. Mohammad Reza Saeb
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.