Biomaterial Composites: New Enablers in Design and Manufacturing of Non-medical Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Novel synthesis of biopolymer-based material systems is at the forefront of biomedical applications in drug delivery and tissue scaffolding due to biomaterials’ biocompatibility, composite versatility, ability to adapt to environmental parameters, and to encapsulate active molecules for sensing and response. Learning from biomedical advances and harnessing biomaterials’ natural biodegradability, new blends are recently gaining interest for non-medical applications in engineered consumer products and building construction systems.

Bio-composite innovation orchestrates multiple materials and resulting properties are difficult to predict. For instance, blends may use binders, strengtheners, and plasticizers from proteins (such as collagen, gelatin, or fibroin) and from polysaccharides (such as cellulose, chitin, glucose, guaran, or sodium alginate). These may be combined with plant fibers to confer tensile and bending capacity (such as flax, hemp, sisal, or jute), or with mineral aggregates to modify porosity or compression strength (such as kaolin, lime, silica, or diatomite). They might support growth of living organisms to perform new function (such as mycelium, microalgae, or mosses), might contain fillers that alleviate industrial waste streams (such as produce, fishery, demolition, fashion, or forestry), and sustainable coatings might help tune weathering (such as waxes and mineral pastes).

New predictive models harnessing artificial intelligence (such as retrieval-augmented generation) can help design multi-objective optical, mechanical, biological, and chemical properties of bio-composites by compiling data in recent literature and computing a myriad of application-specific blends via large language models.

Applications of non-medical ecologically benign bio-composites in products and buildings are challenged to deliver; (1) economies of scale for large constructs, (2) robust properties in dry composites, (3) compatibility with industrial manufacturing, (4) durable chemical or biological interaction, and (5) programmed decay.

Recommended topics:

• Synthesis of bio-composites tailored to naturally biodegrade at end-of-life.
• Artificial intelligence applied to bio-composite blend property prediction.
• Tooling for large-scale manufacturing of biomaterials and bio-composites.
• Applications of bio-composites in architecture and product engineering.

Dr. Laia Mogas-Soldevila
Dr. Ioana Chiulan
Guest Editors

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• biomaterial blends
• bio-composites design
• materials discovery AI
• biomaterials manufacturing
• ambient conditions manufacturing
• bioconstruction
• bio-based products
• regenerative architecture