Engineering Solid Biofoams to Replace Plastics

Mimicking natural biological structures is a route for developing novel, bio-based materials to substitute plastics. Based on a process of creating a solid cellular foam structure similar to natural wood we create extremely lightweight anisotropic structures with a strong direction 40 times stronger than the soft direction (M. Reichler et al., Sci. Reports 11,1 (2021)). We explore the material property landscape exploiting Bayesian Optimization automatically highlighting the relevant control parameters and measurables from multidimensional data reducing the number of measurements over 50 % (Miranda-Valdez et al. Submitted for publication). We report on successful attempts to speed up the material design, for acoustic properties control and for applications to energy storage materials exploiting phase-change material components (Miranda-Valdez et al., J. Energy Storage 73, 1 (2023), and to water and humidity resistant foams, as true plastics replacements (Miranda-Valdez et al., Adv. Eng. Materials, accepted). These properties and techniques are essential for novel materials to become cheaper and easier to use replacing oil-based alternatives in packaging, textile and construction sector.