Scientists create living building material that captures CO₂ from the air
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.
Hard granular materials -- sand, gravel, glass beads, and so on -- can flow, but, in narrow regions or under large forces, they can also jam up, essentially turning into a solid. Soft particles can also flow and jam, but do so under different conditions than hard particles. (Image credit: Girl with red hat; research credit: F. Tapia et al.; via APS Physics)
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Flexible, sticky and adaptable, cells are the ultimate building blocks – forming lifelong structures during development, or moulding into shape inside wounds. Helping this process along, bioengineers make tiny scaffolds to guide cells while they knit together. But making their structures biocompatible – welcoming to cells and tissues – is a challenge. Here researchers use a technique called two-photon polymerisation, aiming precise laser blasts inside a wobbly hydrogel. Chemicals inside react to each flash of light and harden into patterns, allowing the team to create structures like this model femur (grey). They find a balance between biocompatibility, so the structures attract living cells, and photo reactivity, allowing precise design. The sight of human cells (highlighted in turquoise with nuclei in purple) swarming over the femur, raises hopes for similar tiny structures helping with injuries in the future.
Written by John Ankers
Image from work by Wanwan Qiu and colleagues
Institute for Biomechanics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Published in Advanced Materials, January 2026
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A flexible lens controlled by light-activated artificial muscles promises to let soft machines see
by Corey Zheng, PhD Student in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Shu Jia, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Inspired by the human eye, our biomedical engineering lab at Georgia Tech has designed an adaptive lens made of soft, light-responsive, tissuelike materials.
Adjustable camera systems usually require a set of bulky, moving, solid lenses and a pupil in front of a camera chip to adjust focus and intensity. In contrast, human eyes perform these same functions using soft, flexible tissues in a highly compact form.
Our lens, called the photo-responsive hydrogel soft lens, or PHySL, replaces rigid components with soft polymers acting as artificial muscles. The polymers are composed of a hydrogel − a water-based polymer material. This hydrogel muscle changes the shape of a soft lens to alter the lens’s focal length, a mechanism analogous to the ciliary muscles in the human eye.
The hydrogel material contracts in response to light, allowing us to control the lens without touching it by projecting light onto its surface. This property also allows us to finely control the shape of the lens by selectively illuminating different parts of the hydrogel. By eliminating rigid optics and structures, our system is flexible and compliant, making it more durable and safer in contact with the body.
Why it matters
Artificial vision using cameras is commonplace in a variety of technological systems, including robots and medical tools. The optics needed to form a visual system are still typically restricted to rigid materials using electric power. This limitation presents a challenge for emerging fields, including soft robotics and biomedical tools that integrate soft materials into flexible, low-power and autonomous systems. Our soft lens is particularly suitable for this task.
Soft robots are machines made with compliant materials and structures, taking inspiration from animals. This additional flexibility makes them more durable and adaptive. Researchers are using the technology to develop surgical endoscopes, grippers for handling delicate objects and robots for navigating environments that are difficult for rigid robots.
The same principles apply to biomedical tools. Tissuelike materials can soften the interface between body and machine, making biomedical tools safer by making them move with the body. These include skinlike wearable sensors and hydrogel-coated implants.
This variable-focus soft lens, shown viewing a Rubik’s Cube, can flex and twist without being damaged. (image source: Corey Zheng/Georgia Institute of Technology)
What other research is being done in this field
This work merges concepts from tunable optics and soft “smart” materials. While these materials are often used to create soft actuators – parts of machines that move – such as grippers or propulsors, their application in optical systems has faced challenges.
Many existing soft lens designs depend on liquid-filled pouches or actuators requiring electronics. These factors can increase complexity or limit their use in delicate or untethered systems. Our light-activated design offers a simpler, electronics-free alternative.
What’s next
We aim to improve the performance of the system using advances in hydrogel materials. New research has yielded several types of stimuli-responsive hydrogels with faster and more powerful contraction abilities. We aim to incorporate the latest material developments to improve the physical capabilities of the photo-responsive hydrogel soft lens.
We also aim to show its practical use in new types of camera systems. In our current work, we developed a proof-of-concept, electronics-free camera using our soft lens and a custom light-activated, microfluidic chip. We plan to incorporate this system into a soft robot to give it electronics-free vision. This system would be a significant demonstration for the potential of our design to enable new types of soft visual sensing.
Acting as the main interface between the internal and the external world, the skin is the largest and most important organ of the human body
Acting as the main interface between the internal and the external world, the skin is the largest and most important organ of the human body. It is frequently exposed to many types of physical injuries or wounds, including cuts, scrapes, scratches, infections, and ulcers.
Unfortunately, as one ages, the skin becomes more frail and less capable of healing itself without help. With many countries experiencing a rapid rise in the aging population, the demand for treating such skin wounds has created a greater need for accessible and effective wound care products.
The risk of cancer returning depends on several factors, including how progressed it is and the cancer type. However, the fear of the disease reappearing is grave and long-lasting for survivors. Thankfully, scientists in Japan have developed a new hydrogel, called a double network (DN) gel, that reverts different cancer...
El gay Geroncio, últimamente, anda bastante preocupado por la supervivencia de los gaymadrileños. Despues de tomar un café y mientras se aplicaba una dosis de su gel hidroalcohólico ha encontrado una solución viable: que se aplique la Constitución. Con la implementación del artículo 155, la gestión de su Comunidad estaría en manos del Gobierno. De esta manera, la potencial genocida Ayuso dejaría de tener el control sobre la Vida y la Muerte de tantos y tantos gay que solo quieren seguir adelante y tener un Futuro para seguir luciendo trapitos por Chueca.
