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Bacillus spores as building blocks for stimuli-responsive materials and nanogenerators

Nature Nanotechnology volume 9, pages 137–141 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Materials that respond mechanically to external chemical stimuli have applications in biomedical devices, adaptive architectural systems, robotics and energy harvesting1,2,3,4,5. Inspired by biological systems, stimuli-responsive materials have been created that can oscillate2, transport fluid3, provide homeostasis4 and undergo complex changes in shape5. However, the effectiveness of synthetic stimuli-responsive materials in generating work is limited when compared with mechanical actuators6. Here, we show that the mechanical response of Bacillus spores to water gradients exhibits an energy density of more than 10 MJ m−3, which is two orders of magnitude higher than synthetic water-responsive materials7,8. We also identified mutations that can approximately double the energy density of the spores and found that they can self-assemble into dense, submicrometre-thick monolayers on substrates such as silicon microcantilevers and elastomer sheets, creating bio-hybrid hygromorph actuators9,10. To illustrate the potential applications of the spores, we used them to build an energy-harvesting device that can remotely generate electrical power from an evaporating body of water.

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Figure 1: High energy density of Bacillus spores.
Figure 2: Assembling spores into high-energy-density stimuli-responsive materials.
Figure 3: Application of spore-based materials in energy harvesting.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under award no. DE-SC0007999 (spore energy density measurements), the Rowland Junior Fellows Program (bio-hybrid hygromorph actuators), and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (hygrovoltaic generators). The authors thank D. E. Ingber for encouragement and comments on the manuscript, C. P. Stokes for help with the experimental set-up for rapidly switching the humidity levels surrounding the spores, D. Bell for help with electron microscopy and J. M. Sungur for prototype device manufacturing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, 10027, New York, USA

    Xi Chen & Ozgur Sahin

  2. Department of Physics, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    L. Mahadevan

  3. Kavli Institute for Nanobio Science and Technology, Harvard University, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    L. Mahadevan

  4. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    L. Mahadevan & Ozgur Sahin

  5. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Loyola University Medical Center, 2160 S. First Avenue, Maywood, 60153, Illinois, USA

    Adam Driks

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  1. Xi Chen
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Contributions

X.C. performed the experiments in Fig. 1 and analysed the data. L.M. contributed to the theory and scaling estimates. A.D. contributed mutant and wild-type spore samples. O.S. conceived and designed the experiments and performed the experiments in Figs 2 and 3. O.S. and L.M. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Ozgur Sahin.

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A patent application has been filed by Harvard University. US provisional application no. 61/415,902: ‘Bacterial spore based energy system’.

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Chen, X., Mahadevan, L., Driks, A. et al. Bacillus spores as building blocks for stimuli-responsive materials and nanogenerators. Nature Nanotech 9, 137–141 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.290

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