(82a) Sustainable Polymer Nanocomposites Based on 3D Printing with Engineered Living Materials

Conventional technologies for the synthesis and manufacturing of polymer composites involve energy-intensive processes, it is also very challenging to recycle such polymer composite structures. To address those grand challenges, we have been working towards next-generation sustainable polymer composites based on engineered living materials (ELMs). ELMs are an emerging class of materials that integrate living biological entities such as engineered bacteria with functional soft materials. The incorporation of functional bacteria enables unique capabilities such as self-regenerative, self-healing, biosensing, and molecular computing.

We recently demonstrated that the integration of ELMs with 3D printing enables the creation of dynamic, sustainable, and functional soft and composite structures. For instance, 3D hierarchical cellulose structures can be generated by in situ biosynthesis in a hydrogel template followed by controlled shape transformation, which provides an efficient and versatile approach for fabricating 3D customizable bio-scaffolds for tissue engineering. Importantly, programmable microbial biosynthesis with two or multiple types of bacteria can be conducted in 3D-printed soft bioreactors. This enables the precise fabrication of bone-mimetic biocomposites based on two types of bacteria that synergistically produce bionanofibers and mineral nanostructures. We believe the integration of ELMs with 3D printing provides a new and versatile strategy for creating sustainable and functional polymer composites with broad applications in soft actuators/robotics, sensing, environment remediation, and biomedicine.