Why Engineers Are Looking To Mushrooms For The Next Generation Of Materials

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — Engineers spend billions trying to create materials that are both strong and lightweight. Now, scientists are taking inspiration from mushrooms. They have discovered that these humble fungi could change how we make everything from airplane wings to artificial bones.

Researchers from SUNY Binghamton and UC Merced were particularly interested in how mushrooms organize their microscopic parts. Mushrooms can be simultaneously squishy and remarkably strong. A mushroom can support its own weight while growing through concrete, yet you can easily slice one for dinner. Scientists have wondered how this is possible for years.

The research, published in Advanced Engineering Materials, shows that simply changing the direction of microscopic fungal threads can alter a material’s strength without adding any new components or changing the basic recipe. The internal workings of fungi may also apply to manufacturing.

How Mushroom Architecture Works

Mushrooms are built from tiny thread-like structures called hyphae (pronounced HI-fee), which are long chains of fungal cells. When millions of these microscopic threads work together, they create surprisingly strong structures.

But not all mushrooms organize these threads the same way. The research team focused on two types of mushroom architecture that represent completely different engineering approaches.

White button mushrooms (the kind you find in most grocery stores) have what scientists call a “monomitic” system. This essentially means they have just one type of building block. These threads are arranged randomly throughout the mushroom.

Maitake mushrooms, on the other hand, have a “dimitic” system with two distinct types of threads. Some are similar to the threads in white mushrooms, but others have thicker, reinforced walls and tend to grow in preferred directions.

Mushroom Strength

To understand how these different arrangements affect strength, the researchers dehydrated both types of mushrooms to eliminate water’s effects. Then they used powerful electron microscopes to examine their internal structure and subjected samples to compression tests, meaning they squished them to see how much force they could withstand.

When compressed in different directions, the randomly arranged white mushrooms showed virtually no difference in strength. They were equally squishy no matter which way you pushed them. Because the threads are pointing in all directions randomly, it makes sense that the overall strength would be roughly the same regardless of how you apply force.

When maitake mushrooms were compressed in the direction that their threads naturally align, they demonstrated higher strength than when compressed perpendicular to that direction.

At the microscopic level, individual threads from maitake mushrooms were stiffer than those from white mushrooms. However, the team suspected that the strength difference was not only about having stronger individual threads but also about whether the arrangement itself might be equally important.

To test this theory, the researchers built 3D computer simulations that modeled mushroom-like structures as networks of tiny beams. They created virtual materials with different thread orientations, testing structures with threads pointing horizontally, vertically, and at various angles in between.

As the thread orientation changed from horizontal to vertical, the material’s stiffness increased by nearly 100%. The researchers could effectively double a material’s strength just by rearranging the same basic components.

When the threads were arranged at a 60-degree angle, they behaved a lot like the random setup seen in white mushrooms. That hints there could be sweet spots for arranging materials to stay strong from all sides. The simulations showed that you can get totally different results from the same ingredients, just by changing how they’re arranged.

What Industries Could Use Mushroom-Inspired Materials?

Right now, making materials with different strengths usually means using different raw materials or complicated chemistry. But this study shows you might get the same results just by changing how things are put together.

Engineers are excited about what this means for aerospace, where materials need to be strong against specific forces while remaining lightweight. Medical device manufacturers are also looking into ways to build bone supports that can be tailored to match the strength and feel of real bone.

Companies experimenting with mushroom-based alternatives to leather and plastic packaging could potentially fine-tune their bio-based materials’ properties by controlling fungal growth patterns to create custom materials.

Engineers could save enormous amounts of time and money in development by using this research to predict material properties before physical testing. It could be particularly valuable for creating hybrid structures with multiple layers oriented in different directions.

“There is so much we can still learn from nature,” says corresponding author Mir Jalil Razavi from Binghamton University, in a statement. “We are just getting started with this kind of research.”

The humble mushroom could serve as a blueprint for future sustainable materials. Modeling materials after fungi would be a green solution that is also strong enough to actually be useful in engineering.