Graphene and Derivatives

Abstract

As mentioned in the previous two chapters, the increased use of nanomaterials in biomedicine has also created keen interest in exploring their interactions with tissues, cells, and biomolecules [1]. A detailed understanding of how nanomaterials interact with biomolecules at the molecular level is essential to the safe usage of nanoparticle-based biomedical technologies [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Recently, the interactions between proteins, nucleic acids (such as DNA), and cell membranes with nanomaterials (particularly, graphitic nanomaterials) have been studied extensively using experiments and simulations, and they have been shown to affect both the structure and function of biological systems, resulting in serious cytotoxicity and biosafety concerns.Compared to 0D fullerenes (see Chap. 2) and 1D carbon nanotubes (see Chap. 3), the interactions between 2D graphene nanosheets with biomolecules and the resulting cytotoxicity are much less studied. Graphene is a flat monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice [9][10][11], which can be used as the basic building block for fullerenes, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and graphite. Since its first isolation in a stable form in 2004, graphene has attracted worldwide research interests in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology due to its unique structural, mechanical, and electronic properties, and has shortly become the subject of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physic. In the field of biomedical applications, the high specific surface area of graphene provides a major advantage as it allows high-density bio-functionalization, which is essential for nanotechnology-based drug delivery [12][13][14][15][16]. Titov et al. [17] performed coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations to study the interaction of few-layer graphene (FLG) nanosheets with a lipid bilayer and reported stable graphene-lipid hybrid structures. Guo et al. [18] and Wang et al. [19] worked on the translocation of small graphene nanosheets across lipid bilayers. The smooth, continuous topography and biopersistence of graphene play a unique role in its foreign-body-induced carcinogenesis and tumor progression studies [20,21].