Carbon Nanomaterials for Bioimaging, Bioanalysis, and Therapy

2 Using Polymers to Enhance the Carbon Nanomaterial Biointerface

Goutam Pramanik¹ Jitka Neburkova^1,2 Vaclav Vanek¹ Mona Jani¹ Marek Kindermann^1,3,4 and Petr Cigler¹

¹ Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS, Czech Republic

² Charles University, First Faculty of Medicine, Prague, Czech Republic

³ Institute of Microbiology of the CAS, Czech Republic

⁴ University of Chemistry and Technology, Czech Republic

2.1 Introduction

The unique ability of carbon atoms to participate in robust covalent bonds with each other and also with other elements in diverse hybridization states (sp, sp² , sp³ ) allows them to form a wide range of structures, from small molecules to nanomaterials [1]. Carbon‐based nanomaterials have garnered a great deal of interest over the past three decades, starting with the debut of fullerene in 1985 [2], followed by carbon nanotubes [3] (CNTs) and graphene [4] in 1991 and 2004, respectively. Fullerene, CNTs, and graphene are primarily composed of sp² carbon atoms with a network of conjugated π electrons. In recent years, carbon dots (CDs) with mixed sp² and sp³ carbon atoms plus defects and heteroatoms, as well as nanodiamonds consisting of sp³ carbon atoms, have also received a great deal of attention [5, 6]. Due to the quantum confinement effect, these carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) possess many interesting physicochemical properties that are not attainable in bulk carbon materials like diamond and graphite [7, 8]. Over the past ...