Polyelectrolyte Multilayer Films Based on Natural Polymers: From Fundamentals to Bio-Applications

Natural polymers are of great interest in the biomedical field due to their intrinsic properties such as biodegradability, biocompatibility, and non-toxicity. Layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of natural polymers is a versatile, simple, efficient, reproducible, and flexible bottom-up technique for the development of nanostructured materials in a controlled manner. The multiple morphological and structural advantages of LbL compared to traditional coating methods (i.e., precise control over the thickness and compositions at the nanoscale, simplicity, versatility, suitability, and flexibility to coat surfaces with irregular shapes and sizes), make LbL one of the most useful techniques for building up advanced multilayer polymer structures for application in several fields, e.g., biomedicine, energy, and optics. This review article collects the main advances concerning multilayer assembly of natural polymers employing the most used LbL techniques (i.e., dipping, spray, and spin coating) leading to multilayer polymer structures and the influence of several variables (i.e., pH, molar mass, and method of preparation) in this LbL assembly process. Finally, the employment of these multilayer biopolymer films as platforms for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and thermal therapies will be discussed.