Bio-Functional Cu Containing Biomaterials: a New Way to Enhance Bio-Adaption of Biomaterials

Although being an essential trace element required for human body health, Cu has long been seriously considered toxic when its amount exceeds certain limitation, which significantly limited the wide application of Cu in biomaterials. However, more and more bio-functions and benefits of Cu were found and confirmed, attracting the attention from biomaterials researchers in recent years. People have tried to immobilize Cu into biomaterials by various ways, in order to develop novel bio-functional Cu containing biomaterials with better bio-adaptions, and several different bio-functions of them have been demonstrated. This paper makes a review of the development of novel bio-functional Cu containing biomaterials, and focuses on their unique roles in enhancing bio-adaption of biomedical materials, including antibacterial performance, stimulating angiogenesis, promoting osteogenesis and inhibition of in-stent restenosis, aiming at proposing a prospective development direction for biomedical materials with better bio-adaptions.