Two- and Three-Dimensional All-Carbon Nanomaterial Assemblies for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.

Abstract

Carbon nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene have gained significant interest in the fields of materials science, electronics and biomedicine due to their interesting physiochemical properties. Typically these carbon nanomaterials have been dispersed in polymeric matrices at low concentrations to improve the functional properties of nanocomposites employed as two-dimensional (2D) substrates or three-dimensional (3D) porous scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. There has been a growing interest in the assembly of these nanomaterials into 2D and 3D architectures without the use of polymeric matrices, surfactants or binders. In this article, we review recent advances in the development of 2D or 3D all-carbon assemblies using carbon nanotubes or graphene as nanoscale building-block biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications.