Antimicrobial Polymers

Dear Colleagues,

With increasing public health awareness regarding the effects of bacteria and microorganisms, developing antibacterial or antimicrobial polymers has attracted substantial interest. Improving the health of human being via reducing the infection caused by various bacteria has become increasingly important. Nowadays, the rapid growth of harmful pathogens and their serious health effects pose a significant challenge to modern society. Infections by pathogenic microorganisms are of great concern in a number of areas, such as medical devices, drugs, hospital surfaces/furniture, dental restoration, surgery equipment, health care products, and hygienic applications including water purification systems, food packaging and major or domestic appliances. Antimicrobial polymers are the materials having the capability to kill/inhibit the growth of microbes on their surface or surrounding environment. Moreover, with unique chain structures and functional groups, antimicrobial polymers often generate high antimicrobial activity without inducing drug resistance; and meanwhile eliminate the leaching-out effects that are encountered by conventional antimicrobial agents with low molecular weights. The high retention and effective grafting of antimicrobial polymers render various substrates or materials antimicrobial, such as cellulose fibres, textiles, composites and coating materials.

This Special Issue, "Antimicrobial Polymers", includes research and review papers concerning the recent advances on the preparation of antimicrobial polymers, antimicrobial mechanisms, various factors influencing antimicrobial activity, and applications of antimicrobial polymers in food packaging, biomedicine, health-care and environmental material field. Antimicrobial polymers have recently emerged as a new weapon material to combat microbial contamination owing to their unique properties. In this Special Issue, the main strategies pursued for developing antimicrobial polymers, including polymer impregnation with antimicrobial agents or synthesis of polymers bearing antimicrobial moieties to address the health and environmental concerns will be discussed.  The future application of these polymers, either in industrial or healthcare sectors, is anticipated to lead to extremely positive impacts, not only at the economic level, but also for the improvement of quality of life.

Prof. Dr. Huining Xiao
Prof. Dr. Yuanfeng Pan
Guest Editors

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