Caption: The bio-inspired metasurfaces act like a real cloud, enabling daytime cooling, heating and thermal camouflage in a single solution. Credit: Mady Elbahri / Aalto University
While I don’t have a military story for today (Remembrance Day, November 11, 2025), there is the ‘camouflage’ story. A June 30, 2025 news item on Nanowerk announces research into mimicking clouds,
How does a cloud stay cool under direct sunlight –– or seem to vanish in infrared? In nature, phenomena like white cumulus clouds, grey storm systems, and even the hollow hairs of polar bears offer remarkable lessons in balancing temperature, colour and invisibility. Inspired by these atmospheric marvels, researchers have now created a nanoscale ‘cloud’ metasurface capable of dynamically switching between white and grey states — cooling or heating on demand –– all while evading thermal detection.
There is a major global push for passive, energy-efficient thermal management in building materials, wearables, sensors and defence applications. This newly invented system fits perfectly into emerging fields like radiative cooling, adaptive coatings, and thermal heating and thermal camouflage under climate and security pressures.
Much like the transformation from bright cumulus to dark cumulonimbus clouds, this metasurface uses multiple scattering, absorption and polarizonic reflection principles to modulate light and heat. In its ‘white’ state, it strongly backscatters sunlight to enable radiative cooling, while the ‘grey’ state absorbs sunlight efficiently for high-performance heating. Crucially, both states remain ‘invisible’ to infrared sensors due to low mid-infrared emissivity — something no previous surface has achieved.
‘We’ve engineered a nanoscale cloud on every surface. It can tune its colour and temperature like a real cloud — between cooling white and heating grey — while staying hidden from thermal cameras,’ Professor Mady Elbahri from Aalto University explains.
Both white and grey metasurfaces overcome limitations of traditional coatings
Typical white paints cool surfaces by scattering sunlight in all directions, but they still glow in heat vision. This new material works more like a cloud — cooling by bouncing sunlight back and staying hidden from heat sensors.
Conventional white coatings (e.g., titanium dioxide, TiO₂ based) scatter sunlight diffusively, but are only effective in shaded conditions or at night. Their high emissivity in the 8–13 μm range makes them bright in thermal infrared imaging, limiting use in thermal stealth. ‘This new white plasmonic metasurface scatters sunlight through disordered metallic nanostructures while minimising thermal emission — cooling surfaces in full sunlight and remaining thermally camouflaged. This feature makes the innovation groundbreaking,’ says Adel Assad, a PhD student in the group.
Black materials get hot in the sun but also light up thermal cameras as they emit infrared strongly.
‘This grey surface gets hotter than black—but without sending out heat that can be seen by heat sensors. This could be a game-changer for smart textiles, building materials, and camouflage, says Moheb Abdelaziz, a postdoctoral researcher in the group.
Great potential grows from humble beginnings
The research opens new pathways in adaptive surface engineering. Potential applications span from zero-energy building facades that switch between heating and cooling to smart textiles that regulate body temperature without electronics. The discovery also presents opportunities in low-visibility sensors and devices for defence and surveillance.
The next step for the research is to explore dynamic coatings using electrochromic or phase-changing layers for real-time, user-controlled switching between states.
The researchers are proud that the remarkable findings came despite an initial project rejection.
‘With no dedicated funding after initial setbacks, we relied on shared vision and collaboration –– especially with our partners in Germany –– to turn doubt into discovery. It’s proof that science, like clouds, can rise against the odds,’ says Elbahri.
External walls of buildings are normally lifeless and have no additional function. An international team of researchers and companies, in which Carole Planchette from the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer is involved, wants to change this by adding microbial life to building façades. In the project “Archibiome tattoo for resistant, responsive, and resilient cities” (REMEDY), the consortium is working on integrating specifically composed communities of beneficial microorganisms into living ink that adheres to exterior walls made of concrete, wood, metal and other building materials. These living tattoos on buildings are intended to protect the façades from weathering, store CO2 and filter pollutants from the air. The European Innovation Council is funding the four-year project with a total of almost three million euros as part of the Pathfinder funding programme.
Billions of square metres of potential wall space
Over the next 25 years, building façades and roofs with a total area of 9.4 billion square metres will be renovated or newly built in the European Union. “This is a huge potential that we should utilise. Microbiological communities on roofs and façades could fulfil numerous functions without taking up scarce, undeveloped space,” says Carole Planchette.
Useful microbiome for buildings
At the University of Ljubljana, a team led by microbiologist Nina Gunde-Cimerman is looking for suitable microorganisms. The researchers want to design interkingdom microbial consortia that form stable communities.
”The aim is to create a beneficial microbiome for buildings that is resistant to pathogenic microbes and repairs superficial cracks on its own,” says Carole Planchette. “Additional benefits will range from carbon sequestration and oxygen production to bioremediation, among others.”
At the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, Carole Planchette is responsible for developing a suitable, printable ink in which the microorganisms can survive. “We opted for inkjet printing because it allows us to apply the living ink very precisely, in a controlled manner and quickly at the same time,” explains Carole Planchette. The dimensions of the microorganisms, which reach the size of several micrometres and are expected to aggregate in millimetric clusters, are a challenge: They are too bulky for conventional inkjet technology, in which usually particles in the nanometre range are sprayed. Together with the Slovak inkjet manufacturer Qres Technologies and the Austrian coating specialist Tiger Coatings, Carole Planchette is working on the necessary technological modifications.
Technology breakthrough
“The ambition of REMEDY is to achieve a breakthrough in fundamental research in microbiology and synthetic biology, transfer the know-how to materials science in the form of engineered living materials, and develop compatible biofabrication processes that allow personalised design in the architectural context,” says project coordinator Anna Sandak from the research institute InnoRenew CoE in Izola, Slovenia.
”I am confident that we will develop suitable inks and the customised inkjet technology within the project duration,” says Carole Planchette. “I also expect that we will find suitable microorganisms that survive in the ink and under the stress generated by printing. It will be interesting to see whether we succeed in making this process already fully reproducible over the next four years. Using living – thus evolving – inks for industrial processes such as inkjet printing, which tolerate little parameter variations, is a challenge, as we are entering uncharted territory with the REMEDY project.”
The consortium brings together six partners from four EU countries: Slovenia, Austria, the Netherlands, and Slovakia. The collaboration includes InnoRenew CoE acting as coordinator, University of Ljubljana, Graz University of Technology, TIGER Coatings, Xylotrade B.V., and Qres Technologies, with the in-kind support of the University of Primorska as a third party.
The work you see in the above is being displayed at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale or Biennale Architettura 2025; 19th International Architecture Exhibition being held in Venice, 10.05 – 23.11 2025 (May 10 – November 23, 2025). Note: Links have been removed.
ETH researchers present a living material consisting of a hydrogel and cyanobacteria embedded in it.
The photosynthetic bacteria extract CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into biomass and carbonate-containing minerals.
The 3D-printable building material is intended to help reduce the carbon footprint of buildings and infrastructure in the future.
At the Venice Biennale and the Triennale in Milan, two exhibits explore how the living material could be used in architecture.
The idea seems futuristic: At ETH Zurich, various disciplines are working together to combine conventional materials with bacteria, algae and fungi. The common goal: to create living materials that acquire useful properties thanks to the metabolism of microorganisms – “such as the ability to bind CO2 from the air by means of photosynthesis,” says Mark Tibbitt, Professor of Macromolecular Engineering at ETH Zurich.
An interdisciplinary research team led by Tibbitt has now turned this vision into reality: it has stably incorporated photosynthetic bacteria – known as cyanobacteria – into a printable gel and developed a material that is alive, grows and actively removes carbon from the air. The researchers recently presented their “photosynthetic living material” in a study in the journal Nature Communications.
Key characteristic: Dual carbon sequestration
The material can be shaped using 3D printing and only requires sunlight and artificial seawater with readily available nutrients in addition to CO2 to grow. “As a building material, it could help to store CO2 directly in buildings in the future,” says Tibbitt, who co-initiated the research into living materials at ETH Zurich.
The special thing about it: the living material absorbs much more CO2 than it binds through organic growth. “This is because the material can store carbon not only in biomass, but also in the form of minerals – a special property of these cyanobacteria,” reveals Tibbitt.
Yifan Cui, one of the two lead authors of the study, explains: “Cyanobacteria are among the oldest life forms in the world. They are highly efficient at photosynthesis and can utilise even the weakest light to produce biomass from CO2 and water”.
At the same time, the bacteria change their chemical environment outside the cell as a result of photosynthesis, so that solid carbonates (such as lime) precipitate. These minerals represent an additional carbon sink and – in contrast to biomass – store CO2 in a more stable form.
Cyanobacteria as master builders
“We utilise this ability specifically in our material,” says Cui, who is a doctoral student in Tibbitt’s research group. A practical side effect: the minerals are deposited inside the material and reinforce it mechanically. In this way, the cyanobacteria slowly harden the initially soft structures.
Laboratory tests showed that the material continuously binds CO₂ over a period of 400 days, most of it in mineral form – around 26 milligrams of CO2 per gram of material. This is significantly more than many biological approaches and comparable to the chemical mineralisation of recycled concrete (around 7 mg CO2 per gram).
Hydrogel as a habitat
The carrier material that harbours the living cells is a hydrogel – a gel made of cross-linked polymers with a high water content. Tibbitt’s team selected the polymer network so that it can transport light, CO2, water and nutrients and allows the cells to spread evenly inside without leaving the material.
To ensure that the cyanobacteria live as long as possible and remain efficient, the researchers have also optimised the geometry of the structures using 3D printing processes to increase the surface area, increase light penetration and promote the flow of nutrients.
Co-first author Dalia Dranseike: “In this way, we created structures that enable light penetration and passively distribute nutrient fluid throughout the body by capillary forces.” Thanks to this design, the encapsulated cyanobacteria lived productively for more than a year, the materials researcher in Tibbitt’s team is pleased to report.
Infrastructure as a carbon sink
The researchers see their living material as a low-energy and environmentally friendly approach that can bind CO2 from the atmosphere and supplement existing chemical processes for carbon sequestration. “In the future, we want to investigate how the material can be used as a coating for building façades to bind CO2 throughout the entire life cycle of a building,” Tibbitt looks ahead.
There is still a long way to go – but colleagues from the field of architecture have already taken up the concept and realised initial interpretations in an experimental way.
Two installations in Venice and Milan
Thanks to ETH doctoral student Andrea Shin Ling, basic research from the ETH laboratories has made it onto the big stage at the Architecture Biennale in Venice. “It was particularly challenging to scale up the production process from laboratory format to room dimensions,” says the architect and bio-designer, who is also involved in this study.
Ling is doing her doctorate at ETH Professor Benjamin Dillenburger’s Chair of Digital Building Technologies [sic]. In her dissertation, she developed a platform for biofabrication that can print living structures containing functional cyanobacteria on an architectural scale.
For the Picoplanktonics installation in the Canada Pavilion, the project team used the printed structures as living building blocks to construct two tree-trunk-like objects, the largest around three metres high. Thanks to the cyanobacteria, these can each bind up to 18 kg of CO2 per year – about as much as a 20-year-old pine tree in the temperate zone.
“The installation is an experiment – we have adapted the Canada Pavilion so that it provides enough light, humidity and warmth for the cyanobacteria to thrive and then we watch how they behave,” says Ling. This is a commitment: The team monitors and maintains the installation on site – daily. Until 23 November [2025].
At the 24th Triennale di Milano, Dafne’s Skin is investigating the potential of living materials for future building envelopes. On a structure covered with wooden shingles, microorganisms form a deep green patina that changes the wood over time: A sign of decay becomes an active design element that binds CO2 and emphasises the aesthetics of microbial processes. Dafne’s Skin is a collaboration between MAEID Studio and Dalia Dranseike. It is part of the exhibition “We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture” and runs until 9 November [2025].
The photosynthetic living material was created thanks to an interdisciplinary collaboration within the framework of ALIVE (Advanced Engineering with Living Materials). The ETH Zurich initiative promotes collaboration between researchers from different disciplines in order to develop new living materials for a wide range of applications.
Before exploring the Canadian connection a little further, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Dual carbon sequestration with photosynthetic living materials by Dalia Dranseike, Yifan Cui, Andrea S. Ling, Felix Donat, Stéphane Bernhard, Margherita Bernero, Akhil Areeckal, Marco Lazic, Xiao-Hua Qin, John S. Oakey, Benjamin Dillenburger, André R. Studart & Mark W. Tibbitt. Nature Communications volume 16, Article number: 3832 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58761-y Published: 23 April 2025
On the occasion of Canada’s participation in the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the Canada Council for the Arts present Picoplanktonics at the Canada Pavilion, from May 10 to November 23, 2025.
Amidst the ongoing global climate crisis, the Living Room Collective has developed a ground-breaking exhibition that showcases the potential for collaboration between humans and nature. Comprised of 3D printed structures that contain live cyanobacteria capable of carbon sequestration, Picoplanktonics is an exploration of our potential to co-operate with living systems by co-constructing spaces that remediate the planet rather than exploit it.
The Living Room Collective’s exhibition is the culmination of four years of collaborative research by Andrea Shin Ling and various interdisciplinary contributors. It is focused on harnessing the design principles of living systems to develop sustainable, intelligent and resilient materials and technologies for the future. By leveraging ancient biological processes alongside emergent technologies, it proposes designing environments under an ecology-first ethos.
“The Canada Council for the Arts is delighted to unveil Picoplanktonics by the Living Room Collective at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Through the lens of architecture, this year’s Canadian exhibition brings technological innovation and ecological stewardship together. It is a unique exhibition, sure to inspire global audiences and to ignite important conversations, about how our built environment might better house and use natural systems for a more sustainable future.”
– Michelle Chawla, Director and CEO, Canada Council for the Arts
When visitors enter the Canada Pavilion, they will encounter 3D printed structures that were originally fabricated in an ETH Zürich laboratory. These are the largest living material structures produced using a first-of-its-kind biofabrication platform capable of printing living structures at an architectural scale. The unique Picoplanktonics experience stems from adapting the Canada Pavilion to provide enough light, moisture, and warmth for the living cyanobacteria within the structures to grow, thrive and change. For the duration of the exhibition, caretakers will be onsite tending to the structures, emphasizing care and stewardship as essential elements of the design.
As global carbon emissions continue to rise to untenable levels, Picoplanktonics presents a vision of how a regenerative system of construction could operate. It is an ongoing experiment centered on leveraging the reciprocal relationship between living structures, the built environment, and humans. In this way, the Living Room Collective is rethinking building principles and prioritizing ecological resilience beyond human species survival.
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“Picoplanktonics marks four years of research at ETH Zürich with international collaborators in material science, biology, robotics, and computational design. As we move these living prototypes into the Canada Pavilion, we are thrilled to invite the public into this open experiment and reveal all phases of the material’s life, including growth, sickness, and death, while collectively imagining a regenerative design approach that seeks planetary remediation.”
–Andrea Shin Ling, The Living Room Collective
The Living Room Collective
The Living Room Collective is a group of architects, scientists, artists and educators who work at the intersection of architecture, biology and digital fabrication technologies—led by Canadian architect and biodesigner Andrea Shin Ling. Alongside core team members Nicholas Hoban, Vincent Hui and Clayton Lee, the collective seeks to move society away from exploitative systems of production to regenerative ones by inventing design methods and processes that center on natural systems.
They see the Biennale Architettura 2025 as a platform to generate national and international conversations that ask: How does one fabricate a biological architecture? What are the conditions of stewardship? What are the strategies to instigate this at scale, regionally and globally?
Andrea Shin Ling is an architect and biodesigner who works at the intersection of design, digital fabrication and biology. Her work focuses on how the critical application of biologically and computationally mediated design processes can move society away from exploitative systems of production to regenerative ones. She is the 2020 S+T+ARTS Grand Prize winner for her work as Ginkgo Bioworks’ creative resident designing the decay of artifacts in order to access material circularity. Andrea is a founder of designGUILD, a Toronto-based art collective, and was a researcher in the Mediated Matter group at the MIT Media Lab, where she worked on AguahojaI, a 3D-printed bio-material pavilion. She is currently a doctoral fellow at the Chair of Digital Building Technologies at ETH Zurich.
Nicholas Hoban is a computational designer, fabricator and educator. He works at the intersection of computational design, robotics, construction and simulation in pedagogy, research and practice. Nicholas is the director of applied technologies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture [University of Toronto], Landscape, and Design and a lecturer within the Daniels technology specialist program, leading various research and teaching labs while developing curriculum for studios and seminars on advanced fabrication and robotics within architecture. His research focuses on the application of robotics within fabrication and construction and on how we can solve critical problems in geometry through integrated processes. Nicholas was a lead fabricator and computational designer for two previous Venice Biennales: for the 2014 Canadian Pavilion for Lateral Office’s Arctic Adaptations and for the 2016 Swiss Pavilion for Christian Kerez’s Incidental Space.
Vincent Hui is a distinguished professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of Architectural Science, imparting knowledge across diverse domains from design studios to digital tools. His pedagogical excellence has earned him multiple teaching accolades, as he delves into the intersections of architecture, fabrication and allied disciplines. With over 25 years of experience, his extensive publication portfolio focuses on design pedagogy, simulation, prototyping and technological convergence, complemented by a rich body of creative work showcased globally. Collaborating with esteemed organizations such as the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) and the Canadian Architecture Students’ Association (CASA), Vincent endeavours to empower the next generation of designers, navigating emergent shifts in praxis. Committed to bridging academia and industry, he advocates for experiential learning initiatives and outreach endeavours for aspiring designers. His remarkable contributions have culminated in his induction into the esteemed RAIC College of Fellows.
Clayton Lee is a curator, producer and performance artist. He is currently the director (artistic) of the Fierce Festival, in Birmingham, UK. He was previously the director of the Rhubarb Festival, Canada’s longest-running festival of new and experimental performance, at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Clayton has also worked as creative producer on Jess Dobkin’s projects, including For What It’s Worth, her commission at the Wellcome Collection, in London, UK; as curatorial associate at the Luminato Festival; and as managing producer of the CanadaHub at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. His performance projects have been presented in venues across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. He was one of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s 2023 artists-in-residence.
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There are still a few months left if you want to attend. Bon Voyage!
Natural materials that have evolved in plants and animals often display spectacular mechanical and optical properties. For example, spider silk is as strong as steel and tougher than Kevlar, which is used in bullet-proof vests. Inspired by nature, chemists are now synthesizing materials that mimic the structures and properties of shells, bones, muscle, leaves, feathers, and other natural materials. In this talk, I will discuss our recent discovery of a new type of coloured glass that is a mimic of beetle shells. [emphasis mine] These new materials have intriguing optical properties that arise from their twisted internal structure, and they may be useful for emerging applications..
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At the talk, MacLachlan mentioned that his new structurally iridescent material received great interest from the architectural community but since producing it was a painstaking process for a minute quantity, it would not be suitable as a building material.
A few years later I stumbled across some work at Cornell University where material scientists and Korean artist Kimsooja were working on what looks like an iridescent art/science piece, from a September 15, 2014 posting,
For her newest work, Korean artist Kimsooja wanted to explore a “shape and perspective that reveals the invisible as visible, physical as immaterial, and vice versa.” As artist-in-residence for the Cornell Council for the Arts’ (CCA) 2014 Biennial, she has realized that objective with “A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir,” to be installed on the Arts Quad next week [Sept. 15 – 19, 2014]. It will be one of several installations on campus for the semester-long biennial, “Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology,” beginning Sept. 18 [2014] with a talk by Kimsooja.
Here’s how ‘Needle Woman’ looked after fabrication,
Jaeho Chong Pieces of Kimsooja’s “Needle Woman” artwork during fabrication in Shanghai show the polymer film developed by Cornell researchers
Creating materials that change color based on viewing angle represents a significant challenge at the intersection of art and science. Natural examples of this phenomenon, called iridescence, appear in butterfly wings, peacock feathers, and opals. Unlike traditional pigments that absorb specific wavelengths of light, these natural materials use microscopic structures to split light into different colors. This “structural color” approach creates pure, vibrant hues that don’t fade over time and require no potentially toxic pigments.
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A collaboration between Cornell University materials scientists and Korean-American artist Kimsooja has now yielded a practical solution to this challenge. The team developed a method for creating large-scale, durable iridescent coatings, demonstrated through a 46-foot-tall architectural installation titled A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir. Initially exhibited at Cornell under the auspices of the Cornell Council for the Arts, the installation now stands as part of the permanent collection at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, UK, where it has maintained its striking optical properties for over a decade.
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The breakthrough relies on custom-designed plastic molecules that automatically arrange themselves into regular patterns. These molecules consist of two different types of plastic chemically bonded together – polystyrene and poly(tert-butyl methacrylate). When properly designed, thousands of these dual-component molecules spontaneously stack into alternating layers, creating a natural grating that splits light into different colors.
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The key innovation came in synthesizing these molecules at unprecedented sizes – about 1000 times longer than typical plastic molecules. At this scale, the self-assembled layers naturally form patterns around 300-400 nanometers in spacing, large enough to interact with visible light. The researchers then developed a precise coating method to apply these materials while maintaining their self-organized structure.
The scale-up process presented numerous challenges. Each production batch yielded only about 35-40 grams of usable material, with half the attempts failing due to the extreme sensitivity to air and water during synthesis. The installation required roughly 500 grams of material to coat all panels. The team developed a custom two-liter reactor equipped with specialized mixing equipment to increase production scale while maintaining precise control over reaction conditions.
Color consistency posed another challenge. Different batches of the polymer produced slightly different colors due to variations in molecular size. The researchers developed two solutions: blending multiple batches to achieve consistent colors and adding precise amounts of shorter polymer chains to fine-tune the optical properties.
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The team also solved the challenge of applying these coatings to curved surfaces through a specialized lamination technique. They first created the color-shifting layer on flat, flexible plastic sheets, then sandwiched it between protective layers before carefully adhering it to curved acrylic panels. This approach preserved the optical properties while protecting the coating from environmental damage.
Molecules to Masterpieces: Bridging Materials Science and the Arts by Ferdinand F. E. Kohle, Hiroaki Sai, William R. T. Tait, Peter A. Beaucage, Ethan M. Susca, R. Paxton Thedford, Ulrich B. Wiesner. Advanced Materials DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202413939. First published online: 05 December 2024
There’s more than one ‘living’ material story here on this blog; it’s the plant cells that make this latest story different from the others. From a May 1, 2024 news item on phys.org, Note: A link has been removed,
Scientists are harnessing cells to make new types of materials that can grow, repair themselves and even respond to their environment. These solid “engineered living materials” are made by embedding cells in an inanimate matrix that’s formed in a desired shape. Now, researchers report in ACS Central Science that they have 3D printed a bioink containing plant cells that were then genetically modified, producing programmable materials. Applications could someday include biomanufacturing and sustainable construction.
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Caption: After 24 days, the colors produced by plant cells in two different bioinks printed in this leaf-shaped engineered living material are clearly visible. Credit: Adapted from ACS Central Science 2024, DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.4c00338
Recently, researchers have been developing engineered living materials, primarily relying on bacterial and fungal cells as the live component. But the unique features of plant cells have stirred enthusiasm for their use in engineered plant living materials (EPLMs). However, the plant cell-based materials created to date have had fairly simple structures and limited functionality. Ziyi Yu, Zhengao Di and colleagues wanted to change that by making intricately shaped EPLMs containing genetically engineered plant cells with customizable behaviors and capabilities.
The researchers mixed tobacco plant cells with gelatin and hydrogel microparticles that contained Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a bacterium commonly used to transfer DNA segments into plant genomes. This bioink mixture was then 3D printed on a flat plate or inside a container filled with another gel to form shapes such as grids, snowflakes, leaves and spirals. Next, the hydrogel in the printed materials was cured with blue light, hardening the structures. During the ensuing 48 hours, the bacteria in the EPLMs transferred DNA to the growing tobacco cells. The materials were then washed with antibiotics to kill the bacteria. In the following weeks, as the plant cells grew and replicated in the EPLMs, they began producing proteins dictated by the transferred DNA.
In this proof-of-concept study, the transferred DNA enabled the tobacco plant cells to produce green fluorescent proteins or betalains — red or yellow plant pigments that are valued as natural colorants and dietary supplements. By printing a leaf-shaped EPLM with two different bioinks — one that created red pigment along the veins and the other a yellow pigment in the rest of the leaf — the researchers showed that their technique could produce complex, spatially controlled and multifunctional structures. Such EPLMs, which combine the traits of living organisms with the stability and durability of non-living substances, could find use as cellular factories to churn out plant metabolites or pharmaceutical proteins, or even in sustainable construction applications, according to the researchers.
The authors acknowledge funding from National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, and the State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering.
It’s not happening next week but it is a promising step forward if you’re looking for nancellulose applications. From a February 7, 2024 news item on Nanowerk, Note: A link has been removed,
For the first time, a hydrogel material made of nanocellulose and algae has been tested as an alternative, greener architectural material. The study, from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the Wallenberg Wood Science Center, shows how the abundant sustainable material can be 3D printed into a wide array of architectural components, using much less energy than conventional construction methods.
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Caption: 3D printed nanocellulose upscaled for green architectural applications. Credit: Chalmers University of Technology | Emma Fry
The construction industry today consumes 50 percent of the world’s fossil resources, generates 40 percent of global waste and causes 39 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. There is a growing line of research into biomaterials and their applications, in order to transition to a greener future in line with, for example, the European Green Deal.
Nanocellulose is not a new biomaterial, and its properties as a hydrogel are known within the field of biomedicine, where it can be 3D printed into scaffolds for tissue and cell growth, due to its biocompatibility and wetness. But it has never been dried and used as an architectural material before.
“For the first time we have explored an architectural application of nanocellulose hydrogel. Specifically, we provided the so far missing knowledge on its design-related features, and showcased, with the help of our samples and prototypes, the tuneability of these features through custom digital design and robotic 3D printing,” says Malgorzata Zboinska, lead author of the study from Chalmers University of Technology.
The team used nanocellulose fibres and water, with the addition of an algae-based material called alginate. The alginate allowed the researchers to produce a 3D printable material, since the alginate added an extra flexibility to the material when it dried.
Cellulose is coined as the most abundant eco-friendly alternative to plastic, as it is one of the byproducts of the world’s largest industries. “The nanocellulose used in this study can be acquired from forestry, agriculture, paper mills and straw residues from agriculture. It is a very abundant material in that sense,” says Malgorzata Zboinska.
3D printing and nanocellulose/ A resource efficient technique
The architectural industry is today surrounded by access to digital technologies which allows for a wider range of new techniques to be used, but there is a gap in the knowledge of how these techniques can be applied. According to the European Green Deal, as of 2030, buildings in Europe must be more resource-efficient, and this can be achieved through elevated reuse and recycling of materials, such as with nanocellulose, an upcycled, byproduct from industry. At the same time as buildings are to become more circular, cutting-edge digital techniques are highlighted as important leverages for achieving these goals.
“3D printing is a very resource efficient technique. It allows us to make products without other things such as dies and casting forms, so there is less waste material. It is also very energy efficient. The robotic 3D printing system we employ does not use heat, just air pressure. This saves a lot of energy as we are only working at room temperature,” says Malgorzata Zboinska.
The energy efficient process relies on the shear thinning properties of the nanocellulose hydrogel. When you apply pressure it liquifies allowing it to be 3D printed, but when you take away the pressure it maintains its shape. This allows the researchers to work without the energy intensive processes that are commonplace in the construction industry.
Malgorzata Zboinska and her team designed many different toolpaths to be used in the robotic 3D printing process to see how the nanocellulose hydrogel would behave when it dried in different shapes and patterns. These dried shapes could then be applied as a basis to design a wide array of architectural standalone components, such as lightweight room dividers, blinds, and wall panel systems. They could also form the basis for coatings of existing building components, such as tiles to clad walls, acoustic elements for damping sound, and combined with other materials to clad skeleton walls.
The future of greener building materials
“Traditional building materials are designed to last for hundreds of years. Usually, they have predictable behaviours and homogenous properties. We have concrete, glass and all kinds of hard materials that endure and we know how they will age over time. Contrary to this, biobased materials contain organic matter, that is from the outset designed to biodegrade and cycle back into nature. We, therefore, need to acquire completely new knowledge on how we could apply them in architecture, and how we could embrace their shorter life cycle loops and heterogenous behaviour patterns, resembling more those found in nature rather than in an artificial and fully controlled environment. Design researchers and architects are now intensely searching for ways of designing products made from these materials, both for function and for aesthetics,” says Malgorzata Zboinska.
This study provides the first steps to demonstrate the upscaling potentials of ambient-dried, 3D-printed nanocellulose membrane constructs, as well as a new understanding of the relationship between the design of the material’s deposition pathways via 3D printing, and the dimensional, textural, and geometric effects in the final constructs. This knowledge is a necessary stepping stone that will allow Malgorzata Zboinska and her team to develop, through further research, applications of nanocellulose in architectural products that need to meet specific functional and aesthetic user requirements.
“The yet not fully known properties of novel biobased materials prompt architectural researchers to establish alternative approaches to designing these new products, not only in terms of the functional qualities, but also the acceptance from the users. The aesthetics of biobased materials are an important part of this. If we are to propose these biobased materials to society and people, we need to work with the design as well. This becomes a very strong element for the acceptance of these materials. If people do not accept them, we will not reach the goals of a circular economy and sustainable built environment”.
More about the research:
The research is presented in a paper: “Robotically 3D printed architectural membranes from ambient dried cellulose nanofibril-alginate hydrogel”, published in the journal Materials and Design.
The researchers involved in the study are Malgorzata A. Zboinska, Sanna Sämfors and Paul Gatenholm. The researchers were active at Chalmers University of Technology and the Wallenberg Wood Science Center, both in Sweden, at the time of the study.
This work was supported by Adlerbertska Research Foundation and Chalmers University of Technology’s Area of Advance Materials Science. The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation is gratefully acknowledged for funding the Wallenberg Wood Science Center. The authors would also like to recognise the contribution of Karl Åhlund, who assisted in the robotic extrusion system development.
Fact box – previous research:
Printing with nanocellulose was first developed at Chalmers University of Technology within the Wallenberg Wood Science Center in 2015. This is the first time this technology is being scaled up towards applications in buildings.
Biology in the service of architecture, from a June 21, 2023 news item on phys.org, Note: Links have been removed,
“This technology is not alive,” says Laia Mogas-Soldevila. “It is living-like.”
The distinction is an important one for the assistant professor at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design [University of Pennsylvania], for reasons both scientific and artistic. With a doctorate in biomedical engineering, several degrees in architecture, and a devotion to sustainable design, Mogas-Soldevila brings biology to everyday life, creating materials for a future built halfway between nature and artifice.
The architectural technology she describes is unassuming at first look: A freeze-dried pellet, small enough to get lost in your pocket. But this tiny lump of matter, the result of more than a year’s collaboration between designers, engineers and biologists, is a biomaterial that contains a “living-like” system.
When touched by water, the pellet activates and expresses a glowing protein, its fluorescence demonstrating that life and art can harmonize into a third and very different thing, as ready to please as to protect. Woven into lattices made of flexible natural materials promoting air and moisture flow, the pellets form striking interior design elements that could one day keep us healthy.
“We envision them as sensors,” explains Mogas-Soldevila. “They may detect pathogens, such as bacteria or viruses, or alert people to toxins inside their home. The pellets are designed to interact with air. With development, they could monitor or even clean it.”
For now, they glow, a triumphant first stop on the team’s roadmap to the future. The fluorescence establishes that the lab’s biomaterial manufacturing process is compatible with the leading-edge cell-free engineering that gives the pellets their life-like properties.
A rapidly expanding technology, cell-free protein expression systems allow researchers to manufacture proteins without the use of living cells.
Gabrielle Ho, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Bioengineering and co-leader of the project, explains how the team’s design work came to be cell-free, a technique rarely explored outside of lab study or medical applications.
“Typically, we’d use living E. coli cells to make a protein,” says Ho. “E. coli is a biological workhorse, accessible and very productive. We’d introduce DNA to the cell to encourage expression of specific proteins. But this traditional method was not an option for this project. You can’t have engineered E. coli hanging on your walls.”
Cell-free systems contain all the components a living cell requires to manufacture protein —energy, enzymes and amino acids — and not much else. These systems are therefore not alive. They do not replicate, and neither can they cause infection. They are “living-like,” designed to take in DNA and push out protein in ways that previously were only possible using living cells.
“One of the nicest things about these materials not being alive,” says Mogas-Soldevila, “is that we don’t need to worry about keeping them that way.”
Unlike living cells, cell-free materials don’t need a wet environment or constant monitoring in a lab. The team’s research has established a process for making these dry pellets that preserves bioactivity throughout manufacturing, storage and use.
Bioactive, expressive and programmable, this technology is designed to capitalize on the unique properties of organic materials.
Mogas-Soldevila, whose lab focuses exclusively on biodegradable architecture, understands the value of biomaterials as both environmentally responsible and aesthetically rich.
“Architects are coming to the realization that conventional materials — concrete, steel, glass, ceramic, etc. — are environmentally damaging and they are becoming more and more interested in alternatives to replace at least some of them. Because we use so much, even being able to replace a small percentage would result in a significant reduction in waste and pollution.”
Her lab’s signature materials — biopolymers made from shrimp shells, wood pulp, sand and soil, silk cocoons, and algae gums — lend qualities over and above their sustainable advantages.
“My obsession is diagnostic, but my passion is playfulness,” says Mogas-Soldevila. “Biomaterials are the only materials that can encapsulate this double function observed in nature.”
This multivalent approach benefited from the help of Penn Engineering’s George H. Stephenson Foundation Educational Laboratory & Bio-MakerSpace, and the support of its director, Sevile Mannickarottu. In addition to contributing essential equipment and research infrastructure to the team, Mannickarottu was instrumental in enabling the interdisciplinary relationships that led the team to success, introducing Ho to the DumoLab Research team collaborators. These include Mogas-Soldevila, Camila Irabien, a Penn Biology major who provided crucial contributions to experimental work, and Fulbright design fellow Vlasta Kubušová, who co-led the project during her time at Penn and who will continue fueling the project’s next steps.
The cell-free manufacturing and design research required unique dialogues between science and art, categories that Ho believed to be entirely separate before embarking on this project.
“I learned so much from the approach the designers brought to the lab,” says Ho. “Usually, in science, we have a specific problem or hypothesis that we systematically work towards.”
But in this collaboration, things were different. Open-ended. The team sought a living-like platform that does sensing and tells people about interactive matter. They needed to explore, step by step, how to get there.
“Design is only limited by imagination. We sought a technology that could help build towards a vision, and that turned out to be cell-free” says Ho.
“For my part,” says Mogas-Soldevila, “it was inspiring to witness the rigor and attention to constraints that bioengineering brings.”
The constraints were many — machine constraints, biological constraints, financial constraints and space constraints.
“But as we kept these restrictions in play,” she continues, “we asked our most pressing creative questions. Can materials warn us of invisible threats? How will humans react to these bioactive sites? Will they be beautiful? Will they be weird? Most importantly, will they enable a new aesthetic relationship with the potential of bio-based and bioactive matter?”
Down the line, the cell-free pellets and biopolymer lattices could drape protectively over our interior lives, caring for our mental and physical health. For now, research is ongoing, the poetry of design energized by constraint, the constraint of engineering energized by poetry. [emphases mine]
The “poetry of design” and “engineering energized by poetry,” eh? (I have a few comments about science, in my September 11, 2023 posting; scroll down to the ‘Poetry and physics’ subhead.)
Back on topic, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Multiscale design of cell-free biologically active architectural structures by G. Ho, V. Kubušová, C. Irabien, V. Li, A. Weinstein, Sh. Chawla, D. Yeung, A. Mershin, K. Zolotovsky, L. Mogas-Soldevila. Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol., 28 March 2023 Volume 11 – 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2023.1125156
Caption: A 1.8m high, 2m diameter freestanding structure [mycelium vault], made of the BioKnit mycocrete using knitted formwork. Two people are sitting inside it. Credit: Image courtesy of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment.
Scientists hoping to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry have developed a way to grow building materials using knitted molds and the root network of fungi. Although researchers have experimented with similar composites before, the shape and growth constraints of the organic material have made it hard to develop diverse applications that fulfil its potential. Using the knitted molds as a flexible framework or ‘formwork’, the scientists created a composite called ‘mycocrete’ which is stronger and more versatile in terms of shape and form, allowing the scientists to grow lightweight and relatively eco-friendly construction materials.
“Our ambition is to transform the look, feel and wellbeing of architectural spaces using mycelium in combination with biobased materials such as wool, sawdust and cellulose,” said Dr Jane Scott of Newcastle University [UK], corresponding author of the paper in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. The research was carried out by a team of designers, engineers, and scientists in the Living Textiles Research Group, part of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment at Newcastle University, which is funded by Research England.
Root networks
To make composites using mycelium, part of the root network of fungi, scientists mix mycelium spores with grains they can feed on and material that they can grow on. This mixture is packed into a mold and placed in a dark, humid, and warm environment so that the mycelium can grow, binding the substrate tightly together. Once it’s reached the right density, but before it starts to produce the fruiting bodies we call mushrooms, it is dried out. This process could provide a cheap, sustainable replacement for foam, timber, and plastic. But mycelium needs oxygen to grow, which constrains the size and shape of conventional rigid molds and limits current applications.
Knitted textiles offer a possible solution: oxygen-permeable molds that could change from flexible to stiff with the growth of the mycelium. But textiles can be too yielding, and it is difficult to pack the molds consistently. Scott and her colleagues set out to design a mycelium mixture and a production system that could exploit the potential of knitted forms.
“Knitting is an incredibly versatile 3D manufacturing system,” said Scott. “It is lightweight, flexible, and formable. The major advantage of knitting technology compared to other textile processes is the ability to knit 3D structures and forms with no seams and no waste.”
Samples of conventional mycelium composite were prepared by the scientists as controls, and grown alongside samples of mycocrete, which also contained paper powder, paper fiber clumps, water, glycerin, and xanthan gum. This paste was designed to be delivered into the knitted formwork with an injection gun to improve packing consistency: the paste needed to be liquid enough for the delivery system, but not so liquid that it failed to hold its shape.
Tubes for their planned test structure were knitted from merino yarn, sterilized, and fixed to a rigid structure while they were filled with the paste, so that changes in tension of the fabric would not affect the performance of the mycocrete.
Building the future
Once dried, samples were subjected to strength tests in tension, compression and flexion. The mycocrete samples proved to be stronger than the conventional mycelium composite samples and outperformed mycelium composites grown without knitted formwork. In addition, the porous knitted fabric of the formwork provided better oxygen availability, and the samples grown in it shrank less than most mycelium composite materials do when they are dried, suggesting more predictable and consistent manufacturing results could be achieved.
The team were also able to build a larger proof-of-concept prototype structure called BioKnit – a complex freestanding dome constructed in a single piece without joins that could prove to be weak points, thanks to the flexible knitted form.
“The mechanical performance of the mycocrete used in combination with permanent knitted formwork is a significant result, and a step towards the use of mycelium and textile biohybrids within construction,” said Scott. “In this paper we have specified particular yarns, substrates, and mycelium necessary to achieve a specific goal. However, there is extensive opportunity to adapt this formulation for different applications. Biofabricated architecture may require new machine technology to move textiles into the construction sector.”
The mycelium vault (also pictured above) is a freestanding structure,
Caption: A 1.8m high, 2m diameter freestanding structure made of the BioKnit mycocrete using knitted formwork. Credit: Courtesy of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment.
i’ve had transparent wood stories here before but this time it was the lemons and coconuts which captured my attention.
Peter Olsén and Céline Montanari, researchers in the Department of Biocomposites at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, say the new wood composite uses components of lemon and coconuts to both heat and cool homes. (Photo: David Callahan) Courtesy: KTH Royal Institute of Technology
A building material that combines coconuts, lemons and modified wood could one day be enough to heat and cool your home. The three renewable sources provide the key components of a wood composite thermal battery, which was developed by researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Researchers reported the development in the scientific journal, Small (“Sustainable Thermal Energy Batteries from Fully Bio-Based Transparent Wood”). Peter Olsén, researcher in the Department of Biocomposites at KTH, says the material is capable of storing both heat and cold. If used in housing construction, the researchers say that 100 kilos of the material can save about 2.5 kWh per day in heating or cooling—given an ambient temperature of 24 °C.
KTH researcher Céline Montanari says that besides sunlight, any heat source can charge the battery. “The key is that the temperature fluctuates around the transition temperature, 24 °C, which can of course be tailored depending on the application and location,” she says.
The process starts with removing lignin from wood, which creates open pores in the wood cells walls, and removes color. Later the wood structure is filled with a citrus-based molecule—limonene acrylate—and coconut based molecule. Limonene acrylate transforms into a bio-based polymer when heated, restoring the wood’s strength and allowing light to permeate. When this happens the coconut molecule are trapped within the material, enabling the storage and release of energy.
“The elegance is that the coconut molecules can transition from a solid-to-liquid which absorbs energy; or from liquid-to-solid which releases energy, in much the same way that water freezes and melts,” Montanari says. But in the transparent wood, that transition happens at a more comfortable 24C
“Through this transition, we can heat or cool our surroundings, whichever is needed,” Olsén says
Olsén says that potential uses include exterior and interior building material for both transparency and energy saving – in exteriors and interiors. The first application of the product would be for interior spaces to regulate temperatures around the 24C mark to cool and to heat. More study is needed to develop it for exterior use.
And it’s not just for homes or buildings. “Why not as a future material in greenhouses?” he says. “When the sun shines, the wood becomes transparent and stores more energy, while at night it becomes cloudy and releases the heat stored during the day. That would help reduce energy consumption for heating and at the same time provide improved growth.”
A close-up look at the material produced in the study. Courtesy: KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Sustainable Thermal Energy Batteries from Fully Bio-Based Transparent Wood by Céline Montanari, Hui Chen, Matilda Lidfeldt, Josefin Gunnarsson, Peter Olsén, Lars A. Berglund. Small Online Version of Record before inclusion in an issue 2301262 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202301262 First published online: 27 March 2023
The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia. Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome’s famed Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is still intact, and some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome today. Meanwhile, many modern concrete structures have crumbled after a few decades.
Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out the secret of this ultradurable ancient construction material, particularly in structures that endured especially harsh conditions, such as docks, sewers, and seawalls, or those constructed in seismically active locations.
Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities. The findings are published in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic, former doctoral student Linda Seymour, and four others.
For many years, researchers have assumed that the key to the ancient concrete’s durability was based on one ingredient: pozzolanic material such as volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples. [emphasis mine] This specific kind of ash was even shipped all across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time.
Under closer examination, these ancient samples also contain small, distinctive, millimeter-scale bright white mineral features, which have been long recognized as a ubiquitous component of Roman concretes. These white chunks, often referred to as “lime clasts,” originate from lime, another key component of the ancient concrete mix. “Ever since I first began working with ancient Roman concrete, I’ve always been fascinated by these features,” says Masic. “These are not found in modern concrete formulations, so why are they present in these ancient materials?”
Previously disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials, the new study suggests that these tiny lime clasts gave the concrete a previously unrecognized self-healing capability. [emphasis mine] “The idea that the presence of these lime clasts was simply attributed to low quality control always bothered me,” says Masic. “If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimized over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product? There has to be more to this story.”
Upon further characterization of these lime clasts, using high-resolution multiscale imaging and chemical mapping techniques pioneered in Masic’s research lab, the researchers gained new insights into the potential functionality of these lime clasts.
Historically, it had been assumed that when lime was incorporated into Roman concrete, it was first combined with water to form a highly reactive paste-like material, in a process known as slaking. But this process alone could not account for the presence of the lime clasts. Masic wondered: “Was it possible that the Romans might have actually directly used lime in its more reactive form, known as quicklime?”
Studying samples of this ancient concrete, he and his team determined that the white inclusions were, indeed, made out of various forms of calcium carbonate. And spectroscopic examination provided clues that these had been formed at extreme temperatures, as would be expected from the exothermic reaction produced by using quicklime instead of, or in addition to, the slaked lime in the mixture. Hot mixing, the team has now concluded, was actually the key to the super-durable nature.
“The benefits of hot mixing are twofold,” Masic says. “First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form. Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction.”
During the hot mixing process, the lime clasts develop a characteristically brittle nanoparticulate architecture, creating an easily fractured and reactive calcium source, which, as the team proposed, could provide a critical self-healing functionality. As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread. Previous support for this hypothesis was found through the examination of other Roman concrete samples that exhibited calcite-filled cracks.
To prove that this was indeed the mechanism responsible for the durability of the Roman concrete, the team produced samples of hot-mixed concrete that incorporated both ancient and modern formulations, deliberately cracked them, and then ran water through the cracks. Sure enough: Within two weeks the cracks had completely healed and the water could no longer flow. An identical chunk of concrete made without quicklime never healed, and the water just kept flowing through the sample. As a result of these successful tests, the team is working to commercialize this modified cement material.
“It’s exciting to think about how these more durable concrete formulations could expand not only the service life of these materials, but also how it could improve the durability of 3D-printed concrete formulations,” says Masic.
Through the extended functional lifespan and the development of lighter-weight concrete forms, he hopes that these efforts could help reduce the environmental impact of cement production, which currently accounts for about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Along with other new formulations, such as concrete that can actually absorb carbon dioxide from the air, another current research focus of the Masic lab, these improvements could help to reduce concrete’s global climate impact.
The research team included Janille Maragh at MIT, Paolo Sabatini at DMAT in Italy, Michel Di Tommaso at the Instituto Meccanica dei Materiali, in Switzerland, and James Weaver at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. The work was carried out with the assistance of the archeological museum of Priverno, Italy.
For the really curious, Jennifer Ouellette’s January 6, 2023 article (Ancient Roman concrete could self-heal thanks to “hot mixing” with quicklime) for Ars Technica provides a little more detail.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the latest paper,
One last note, DMAT is listed as Paolo Sabatini’s home institution. It is a company for which Sabatini is a co-founder and CEO (chief executive officer). DMAT has this on its About page, “Our mission is to develop breakthrough innovations in construction materials at a global scale. DMAT is at the helm of concrete’s innovation.”
