Mycelium-based-composites – Vision for substitution of fossil-based materials

Abstract

For decades, fossil-based materials have formed the basis of an almost endless range of technical products. Through variable chemical composition and several additives, especially plastics can have a wide range of properties, which form the basis for the diversity of plastic-based products. While this variability enables many sustainability strategies, such as lightweighting, it is also impeding a fully circular economy. Therefore, in recent years, a number of new raw materials have been developed, but they can only cover a very limited part of the wide range of properties of fossil-based plastics. Another promising class of materials are composites based on fungal mycelium.

However, these are mainly limited to the consumer sector, e.g. vegan leather, where there is smaller demand for durability, functionality etc. The step from consumer to engineering materials require the production (or growth) process to be reproducible within the necessary quality requirements. Cyber-physical production systems have the potential to realise necessary technical qualities despite e.g. quality fluctuations of the raw material and production processes that are susceptible to interference. For this reason, this paper analyses the state of the art in production of mycelium based composites, shows the existing gaps and draws a vision to close these gaps.