Robust Myco-Composites as a Platform for Versatile Hybrid-Living Structural Materials

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel additive manufacturing platform for creating complex, scalable, and tunable myco-composites that leverage fungal mycelium's properties for sustainable, versatile structural materials with enhanced mechanical and surface characteristics.

Contribution

It presents a new manufacturing platform combining high-resolution biocomposite 3D printing with indirect inoculation, enabling complex geometries and improved properties of myco-composites.

Findings

Mycelium colonization significantly enhances mechanical strength.

The platform allows fabrication of foldable bio-welded containers.

Flexible mycelium textiles demonstrate the versatility of the approach.

Abstract

Fungal mycelium, a living network of filamentous threads, thrives on lignocellulosic waste and exhibits rapid growth, hydrophobicity, and intrinsic regeneration, offering a potential means to create next-generation sustainable and functional composites. However, existing hybrid-living mycelium composites (myco-composites) are tremendously constrained by conventional mold-based manufacturing processes, which are only compatible with simple geometries and coarse biomass substrates that enable gas exchange. Here we introduce a class of structural myco-composites manufactured with a novel platform that harnesses high-resolution biocomposite additive manufacturing and robust mycelium colonization with indirect inoculation. We leverage principles of hierarchical composite design and selective nutritional provision to create a robust myco-composite that is scalable, tunable, and compatible with complex geometries. To illustrate the versatility of this platform, we characterize the impact of mycelium colonization on mechanical and surface properties of the composite, finding that it yields the strongest mycelium composite reported to date, and demonstrate fabrication of unique foldable bio-welded containers and flexible mycelium textiles. This study bridges the gap between biocomposite and hybrid-living materials research, opening the door to advanced structural mycelium applications and demonstrating a novel platform for development of diverse hybrid-living materials.