Reactive fungal wearable

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of fungi-based bioelectronics in smart wearables, demonstrating that fungal sensors can detect mechanical and chemical stimuli, paving the way for ecofriendly, reactive biowearables.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of fungal wearables and provides experimental evidence of fungi's electrical response to stimuli, highlighting their sensing capabilities for future bioelectronic applications.

Findings

Fungi can produce measurable electrical responses to mechanical stretching.

Fungi respond electrically to attractants and repellents.

Fungal sensors can distinguish different types of stimuli.

Abstract

Smart wearables sense and process information from the user's body and environment and report results of their analysis as electrical signals. Conventional electronic sensors and controllers are commonly, sometimes augmented by recent advances in soft electronics. Organic electronics and bioelectronics, especially with living substrates, offer a great opportunity to incorporate parallel sensing and information processing capabilities of natural systems into future and emerging wearables. Nowadays fungi are emerging as a promising candidate to produce sustainable textiles to be used as ecofriendly biowearables. To assess the sensing potential of fungal wearables we undertook laboratory experiments on electrical response of a hemp fabric colonised by oyster fungi~\emph{Pleurotus ostreatus} to mechanical stretching and stimulation with attractants and repellents. We have shown that it is possible to discern a nature of stimuli from the fungi electrical responses. The results paved a way towards future design of intelligent sensing patches to be used in reactive fungal wearables.