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Polymeric nanoparticles (Figure 1.2a,b) are colloidal solid particles having a size in the range of 10 nm–1 μm. Based on the preparation method, polymeric nanoparticles can be classified into two types of structures: nanocapsule (Figure 1.2a) and nanosphere (Figure 1.2b). Among these, nanospheres consist of a matrix system which facilitates uniform dispersion of the drug. However, in the case of nanocapsules, the drug is only embedded in a cavity and the cavity is surrounded by a polymeric membrane (Sharma 2019). Among the various organic nanomaterials, polymeric nanoparticles have attracted huge attention over the last few years due to their unique properties and behaviors resulting from their small size. As reported in many studies, these nanoparticles demonstrated potential applications in biomedicine particularly in diagnostics and drug delivery. Polymeric nanoparticles are preferably used as a nanocarrier for the conjugation of various drugs, natural polymers (e.g. natural polymers like chitosan, gelatin, alginate, and albumen), and synthetic polymers (Zhang et al. 2013a,b). Further, they showed significant benefits in treatment because of controlled release of the drug, their ability to combine both therapy and imaging (theranostics), protection of drug molecules due to conjugation, and their target‐specific drug delivery (Crucho and Barros 2017).

Figure 1.2 Schematic representation of various organic nanomaterials.