Emergent 2D materials beyond graphene: Plausible role in biomedical applications

To support sustainability, advanced, affordable, and applicable systems of desired and controlled performance are needed for efficient biomedical, environmental, energy, and agricultural applications. In this direction, two-dimensional materials (2D) can be the best choice to explore because of a better understanding and control of their systems and properties. A number of excellent reviews demonstrating the role of graphene-based nanomaterials for biomedical applications are reported in the literature. However, beyond graphene, emerging 2D materials are not yet well explored to employ them to achieve next-generation biomedical application systems. To cover these gaps, this comprehensive review carefully and critically discusses the 2D materials beyond graphene which includes transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), transition metal oxides (TMOs), Xenes, MXenes, and metal organic framework (MOF) for biomedical applications. These 2D materials have been widely employed for biomedical and healthcare applications, including drug delivery, cancer therapy, tissue engineering, biosensing etc., and are continuously supporting other scientific fields but their better understanding in terms of controlling shape, size, and properties (optical, electrical, magnetic, and molecular) is still the focus of state-of-the-art research, and focus of this review. Many researchers have nicely discussed the methods of synthesis, characterization, categorization, and of course the diverse applications of different 2D materials in their articles; however, the literature still lacks a complete and collective work emphasizing on extensive analysis of some emerging 2D materials such as TMDs, TMOs, MXenes, Xenes, and MOFs in biomedical contexts. Keeping this is mind, this review is a modest attempt to summarize, and illustrate the role and applications of 2D materials in this field. The outcomes will serve as key findings that should be known to the scholars who are planning to explore and research in the field of 2D materials for advanced applications with high and adaptable performance.