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Anisotropic Growth of Filamentous Fungi in Wood Hydrogel Composites Increases Mechanical Properties

Summary

Researchers created strong, eco-friendly composite materials by growing fungi inside delignified wood. The fungi naturally aligned with the wood fiber structure, which significantly strengthened the resulting material. By adjusting the type of wood, fungal species, and nutrient content, scientists could fine-tune the material properties. These sustainable composites show promise for use in building materials and packaging applications.

Background

There is growing demand for sustainable, biodegradable, and mechanically robust materials. Delignified wood preserves the natural fiber directionality of wood, creating a porous scaffold with aligned fibers that can guide fungal growth in anisotropic patterns, similar to how fungi naturally grow on wood materials in nature.

Objective

To investigate whether delignified wood scaffolds can serve as platforms for fungal proliferation to create wood-fungi composites with enhanced mechanical properties, and to determine how wood type, fungal species, and culture media composition affect the resulting composite strength.

Results

Fungal proliferation significantly increased tensile strength and Young’s modulus across all wood types, with tensile strength increasing from ~10 kPa to nearly 1000 kPa and Young’s modulus from ~10^-3 GPa to ~10^-1 GPa. A. oryzae produced composites with higher mechanical properties than R. oligosporus, likely due to its septate mycelium. Wood density did not directly correlate with composite strength, but lower density woods (balsa, poplar) promoted greater fungal growth than higher density spruce.

Conclusion

Delignified wood serves as an excellent scaffold for creating mechanically enhanced fungal composites through anisotropic fungal growth along aligned wood fibers. The mechanical properties can be precisely tuned by selecting appropriate wood type, fungal species, and culture media composition, demonstrating potential for sustainable engineered living materials suitable for building and packaging applications.
  • Published in:ACS Applied Bio Materials,
  • Study Type:Experimental Study,
  • Source: 10.1021/acsabm.5c00374, PMID: 40476829
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