Sterilization of polymeric aerogels using green technologies

Bone fractures, bone degenerative/inflammatory problems, and the infections derived from the implantation procedures of biomedical devices, represent serious public health problems that are strongly affecting, for example, the elderly population in Europe. Despite relevant and advantageous, the use of highly porous biopolymers as the organic counterparts of biomaterials intended for hard-tissue biomedical applications has been somehow decelerating, which is mostly due to several relevant issues related to their physicochemical degradation during the typically-employed processing and sterilization steps, and to the corresponding impairment of their required physicochemical, biological and functional properties. This research proposal, sponsored by FCT and developed at CIEPQPF, aims to integrate three distinct processing steps, all of them using “greener”, “safer”, “milder”, and non-degrading supercritical carbon dioxide-based technologies, that will allow the faster and more efficient processing and sterilization of innovative highly-porous aerogel-type biomaterials to be used at hard-tissue biomedical applications.