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This is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science. I'm Sarah Vitalk.

What if you could create household objects, say bio-garments,

kitchen appliances, or blinds and curtains that powered themselves using the sun,

we're fully recyclable, 100% biodegradable, sequestered carbon just by existing,

filtered toxins out of the air, and we're also alive. Dr. Maria Ubentom at Delft University

and a postdoc researcher in her lab, Dr. Srikan Balasubmaranian, have gotten one step closer

to making that a reality. They have created a 3D-printed photosynthetic material made out of algae.

Here is Dr. Ubentom. Yeah, we were interested in a 3D printing,

living material that's made of a microalgae, and there were a couple example of 3D-printed

algae material already out there, but we were interested in making one that would be enough

mechanically robust to be used in real applications, because a lot of these material are based on

hydrogel, which tend to be very fragile. You might not have heard of hydrogels, but you've certainly

used them. Wet disposable baby diapers, chia pudding, toy water beads, all of these are hydrogels

that you might have around your house, but hydrogels aren't very strong or solid, so the team wanted

to make something better. They already had a 3D printer that they had built in their lab to

print materials with bacterial bio-ink. Bio-ink is a solution that contains living cells that you

...