Analytical methods for the characterization of bionanomaterials

Abstract Remarkable progress has been made in the field of nanobiotechnology in the past 15 years. The growing demand for analytical evidence related to nanosized biomaterials involves the adaptation of available tools and techniques or the improvement of new ones. The primary concern for the analytical sciences has been to examine the biomaterials as a new sort of analytes, relating both physical and chemical features. Currently, nanosized biomaterials can be imaged and quantified; considerable progress has been made in the arenas of biomimetics, tissue engineering, and drug delivery. Mostly, specific physicochemical techniques at the nanoscale could be categorized into three parts: characterization of physicochemical features (e.g., size, shape, aggregation, and surface area), the examination of nanosized biomaterial interactions with cells, and analytical examination methods. Analytical characterization usually involves the analysis of the physical nature, chemical composition, and quantification of the elements within the nanosized biomaterials. In this chapter, we describe the existing analytical techniques and their operating principles for dealing with nanosized biomaterials and promising forms to refine them before being employed in biomedical applications.