Electronics and batteries are built into the soup
Mushroom skin can replace plastics and polymers and create more sustainable electronics, researchers show.
An iPhone or laptop made up of dried mushrooms?
It may be heard, but it may be realized in the future.
Well, an Austrian research group has shown on electronic circuits can function in small platforms built from mushroom mycelium – the network of filamentous cells that a mushroom consists of.
The material has all the properties needed to replace environmentally and climate-damaging materials such as plastics and polymers, which are used in all electronic matters today.
Mushroom mycelium is also naturally degradable, cheap and environmentally friendly.
– It is an important step towards sustainable electronics, writes materials researcher Martin Kaltenbrunner in the new study.
also read
Here are the year’s 10 best images from the microscopic world
Electronic waste equivalent to 14 Eiffel Towers per day
It takes just eleven days to break down the mushroom material in a pile of compost.
In comparison with several hundred years for nature and the breakdown of materials such as plastics and polymers. Today, it produces more than 140,000 tonnes of electronic waste per day, Kaltenbrunner points out:
– This corresponds to 14 Eiffel Towers. So it is a serious societal problem, says Kaltenbrunner, who is a professor at Johannes Kepler University Linz.
However, reducing the mountain of electronic waste – also called e-waste – is a long and tough battle. And although mushroom mycelium does not solve all problems, it can be a step in the right direction.
Chinese medicine mushroom turns into battery
The researchers have grown mushroom mycelium from the mushroom Ganoderma lucidum – i.e. lacquer juke. It is a fungus that is nourished by and grows on dead wood. The mushroom has also been used as a Chinese alternative medicine for millennia.
When the mushroom – under completely sterile conditions – has been grown to a suitable form, it is heated so that it dies, but it does not rot.
It would be impractical if, for example, it were to be used in a telephone.
The researchers then cut off a leaf-thin mushroom skin that they can use for products:
- A battery that the mycelium replaces plastic and polymer components. It does not replace the electrode in the battery or the copper that conducts the current.
- A moisture sensor – a plate with a battery and a Bluetooth chip, among other things, could measure moisture levels.
According to the researchers, the two prototypes work as well as variants made of plastic and polymers.
Danish mushroom researcher: Looks promising
– It is very exciting, says Jens Christian Frisvad, mushroom researcher at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). He himself has the job of developing batteries based on molds.
– I have not come across exactly that use of mycelium before. But it seems very promising, he says.
In the past, mushrooms have been used, among other things, to hunt for new doctors. Penicillin, for example, is the active substance in the mold Penicillium rubens.
The many possibilities of mushrooms
In the last 10–15 years, materials researchers in particular have thrown themselves at the many excellences of mushrooms. Mushroom mycelium can be used as concrete, cement and leather.
Today, mushroom mycelium is already used to make chairs, shoes and building materials. At the School of Architecture in Copenhagen, a research group is working to build an intelligent mushroom house.
And you can already buy different building materials from mycelium and not least buy sneakers from Adidas where some of the parts have been replaced with mycelium.
– I have a lampshade made of mycelium. And it works fine, says Frisvad:
– It is a good material that can easily break down in nature. Scaling is easy. It is cheap to produce. It is not flammable, he points out.
Frisvad says that many mushroom mycelium produce hydrophobins. The most water-repellent substance in nature. A fabric that can be used to make raincoats or ship paint.
– So it’s a long range of possibilities, he concludes.
Aiming for small appliances
For now, however, the Austrian researchers are working with relatively small electronic devices.
– We work with electronics that do not need to last for decades, such as sensors. Or NFC tags that are used on anti-theft tags in stores, says Martin Kaltenbrunner.
We village alternatives to a regular circuit board – printed circuit board in English – on which all the various electronic components are mounted.
Circuit boards consist of plastics and polymers and are either impossible or very difficult to recycle.
– This is why we make an alternative in the form of mycelium, says Kaltenbrunner.
Central to a computer sitter is e.g. also a processor – a regular CPU – which consists of silicon, plastic and copper. It cannot be exchanged for a sopp copy. The same applies to Bluetooth chips and integrated circuits.
– But these components can ultimately be reused, explains Kaltenbrunner.
Bigger ambitions
However, the ambitions are greater in the long term.
– In principle, modern telephones, computers and so on already use some circuit boards that can be replaced with our materials, says Kaltenbrunner.
– But they usually have several layers, and this is something we still haven’t managed to achieve, he says.
Kaltenbrunner also says that mushroom cultivation «is scalable to industrial level and low cost»:
– So the only thing needed is more research on commercialisation. But I am optimistic, he concludes.
Reference:
Doris Danninger, Martin Kaltenbrunner and others: MycelioTronics: Mushroom mycelium skin for sustainable electronics. The progress of science2022. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.add7118
© Videnskab.dk. Translated by Lars Nygaard for forskning.no. Read the original case on videnskab.dk here.