Liquid and supercritical CO2 has been evaluated as a safe alternative to established methods for sterilizing and disinfecting biomedical devices and materials. Furthermore, CO2 has potential as a cleaning medium, which suggests that processes may be developed that simultaneously remove bioburden and sterilize.  Because of its favorable surface tension and transport properties, near-critical CO2 processes can be tailored to create and control porosity, pore size distribution, and other physical properties of certain biomedically-relevant polymers, such as hydrogels.This paper reviews our recent results as well as those of others on several aspects of sterilization, disinfection,and cleaning of polymeric biomaterials using liquid and supercritical CO2 technology. Additional examples from our lab in an emerging area of protein deactivation will be presented.

Supercritical and liquid carbon dioxide for biomedical applications

247th National Meeting (2014)

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