Surely at this point it is not the first time you read about him graphene, that material that has a thousand and one uses but that, at least for now, is still being tested in the laboratory. As a detail, tell you that among the most interesting characteristics of graphene we can find that, according to scientists, it is about one hundred times stronger than steel and five times lighter than aluminum. To all this we must also add that it has sufficient properties to be considered a perfect thermoelectric conductor.
Unfortunately, one of the main problems for this material to finally reach the market is that, at least for the moment, its manufacturing costs are too high, a problem that has a difficult solution and in which there are already many teams of scientists working. At this point I would like to tell you about the work being done by various researchers from the Department of Bionanoscience of the Technological University of Delf (Netherlands) so that, by developing 3d printed bacteria custom materials can be created.
After the first part of the study, we should already be able to create custom graphene.
Within the study they are conducting, as you will surely understand, we found that a very important part of it tries to develop and use a series of modified 3D printers to be able print bacterial colonies on graphene oxide. Thanks to the use of this method, we could be able to create entire colonies of bacteria that would be responsible for producing pure graphene in a much more efficient way without the need, as before, of having to use dangerous chemical compounds or expensive heat sources.
Finally, just tell you that, at a technical level, the researchers are using and modifying a CoLiDo 3D printer which is responsible for depositing the bacteria colonies exactly at the point where they are needed so that, for example, we can create a graphene plate with some parts more conductive than others or making a certain area much harder while another may have elastic properties.