Functionalized Surfaces and Interactions with Biomolecules

One of the first crucial reactions of any artificial material exposed to biological environments is the materials' surface interaction with biomolecules. The interaction is widely dependent on the material properties and the chemical functionalities and structures exposed on its surface. Tailoring the surface properties of ceramics and other materials is a manner to guide biomolecular interactions, to prevent or reduce them, to specifically evoke them, and hence use them to stimulate a certain subsequent reaction. This provides an opportunity to also control the interactions and tune materials by surface functionalization for a variety of applications. In this chapter, we give a concise overview of the most crucial principles that govern the complex biomolecule-surface interactions focusing on fundamental forces and which structures from materials, biomolecules, and their environments influence the interaction in complex biological media. A special focus is on surface functionalizations for ceramic substrates that can be used to tune biomolecular interactions with the material surfaces as an important design principle for materials in various applications in biomedical, environmental, and pharmaceutical areas.