Author: Dan Garisto / Source: Science News for Students
Some bacteria have a superpower that scientists would love to harness.
These microbes capture energy from light, just as plants do. Scientists have wanted to tap these bacteria to make electricity. But in previous research, they didn’t survive long on artificial surfaces. Researchers have now moved them to a living surface — a mushroom. Their creation is the first mushroom to make electricity.Sudeep Joshi is an applied physicist. He works at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. He and his colleagues turned that mushroom — a fungus — into a mini energy farm. This bionic mushroom combines 3-D printing, conductive ink and bacteria to generate electricity. Its design could lead to new ways of combining nature with electronics.
Cyanobacteria (sometimes called blue-green algae) make their own food from sunlight. Like plants, they do this using photosynthesis — a process that splits water molecules, releasing electrons. The bacteria spit out many of these stray electrons. When enough electrons build up in one place, they can create an electrical current.
The researchers needed to clump a lot of these bacteria together. They decided to use 3-D printing to deposit them precisely onto a surface. Joshi’s team chose mushrooms for that surface. After all, they realized, mushrooms naturally host communities of bacteria and other microbes. Finding test subjects for their tests was easy. Joshi simply went to the grocery store and picked up white button mushrooms.
Printing on those mushrooms, though, turned out to be a real challenge. 3-D printers have been designed to print on flat surfaces. Mushroom caps are curved. The researchers spent months writing computer code to solve the problem. Eventually, they came up with a program to 3-D print their ink onto the curved mushroom tops.
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