399: Conductor Creating Carbon Canvases

This episode: Bacteria can aide the production of the useful
material graphene, using their ability to add electrons to
external surfaces!


Download Episode (7.7 MB, 11.3 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Brevibacterium frigoritolerans

News item

Takeaways
Advanced materials often take advanced techniques to create, but
they offer numerous benefits: increased strength and flexibility,
smaller size, more options. One such material is graphene, which
is basically a sheet of carbon atoms linked together like
chainmail. It is only a single atom thick but is amazingly
strong, mostly transparent, and good at conducting heat and
electricity.

The trick is, it's hard to make in large quantities cheaply and
easily. Sheets of carbons can be obtained from blocks of
graphite, but these sheets are graphene oxide, which lack the
desirable properties of graphene. Chemical methods can be used to
remove the oxidation, but they are harsh and difficult. Luckily,
bacteria are great at microscopic remodeling. In this study,
electron-transferring bacteria are able to reduce the graphene
oxide to graphene with properties almost as good as are achieved
by chemical reduction.

Journal Paper:
Lehner BAE, Janssen VAEC, Spiesz EM, Benz D, Brouns SJJ, Meyer
AS, van der Zant HSJ. 2019. Creation of Conductive Graphene
Materials by Bacterial Reduction Using Shewanella oneidensis.
ChemistryOpen 8:888–895.


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Frog skin gut bacteria correlate with resistance to deadly
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Skin microbiota could be transplanted to treat skin
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