At first glance, the Labor of Nam-Joon Chos at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore looks like a typical research institution scientist who go away, overcrowded workbenches, a buzz of machines in the background. But the orange-yellow spots of the laboratory stems that are divided into hooks indicate a less examined object.
The powdered spot is pollen: microscopic grains that contain male reproductive cells that give off trees, weeds and grasses seasonally. But Cho does not investigate annoying effects such as hayers or what pollen means for the plants that make it. Instead, the material scientist has spent a decade of pioneer and refinery techniques to convert pollen rigid outer shells from a polymer that is so hard that he is sometimes called “The Diamond of the Plant World”-and transforms the grains into a blunt consistency.
Cho believes this microgel could believe a versatile building block for many environmentally friendly materials, including paper, film and sponges.
Many people think of pollen when they do not fertilize plants or feed insects as a useless dust, but valuable applications if they know how to work with it. Says Cho, who was ina -enclosing an overview of the potential applications of pollen in 2024 Annual review of chemical and biomolecular technology. He is not the only scientist who thinks. Noemi Csaba, a researcher of nanotechnology and drug delivery at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, would like to develop hollowed out pollen shells in protective vehicles to provide the eyes, lungs and stomach.
Researchers who examine the usefulness of pollen for people for humans are a rare breed, says Csaba. “I think it's a bit surprising,” she says. “Pollen is a very, very interesting biomaterial.”
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To work with pollen, scientists can remove the sticky coating around the grains in a process called Defating. Removing these lipids and allergenic proteins is the first step to create the empty capsules for pharmaceutical levy that is looking for CSABA. In addition, Pollens had apparently impenetrable shell – consisting of the Biopolymer Sporopollenin – surprised researchers for a long time and limited his use.
A breakthrough occurred in 2020, when Cho and his team reported that pollen in an alkaline solution of potassium hydroxide at 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit) could significantly change the surface chemistry of pollen grains in order to easily absorb the water and keep water.
The resulting pollen is just as flexible as the Play-Doh, says Shahrudin Ibrahim, a research scholarship holder in Chos Labor that helped to develop technology. Before treatment, pollen grains are rather murmur: hard, inert and largely not reactive. After that, the particles are so soft that they glue together easily so that more complex structures can form. This opens numerous applications, says Ibrahim and proudly holds a vial of the yellow -brown slush in the laboratory.
If the microgel is thrown onto a flat shape and dried out, the microgel is strong, depending on the final thickness, and yet flexible. It is also sensitive to external stimuli, including changes in the pH value and humidity. Exposure to the alkaline solution means that pollen components become hydrophilic or water -loving more, so that the conditions that depend on the conditions due to the absorption or expulsion of water swells or shrinks, explains Ibrahim.
This winning combination of real estate, as the Singaporian researchers believe, makes pollen -based film a prospect for many future applications: Smart actuators with which devices can recognize and react to changes in their surroundings, to monitor portfolios persons to monitor heart signals, and much more. And since pollen is naturally UV protection, it is possible to replace certain photonically active substrates in perovskit solar cells and other optoelectronic devices.
Cho's laboratory has also shown that paper can be printed from pollen. According to Cho, which patented the microgel production process, it can be a sustainable alternative to traditional paper for writing, printing and packaging. Manufacture of traditional paper destroys trees and is resource -intensive, which requires up to 13 liters of water for each side produced. Pollen is of course released from seeds producing plants in loose fills, and it requires only a few simple steps. Ink can be removed with a simple alkaline solution – a process in which the paper can be reused.
In addition, a freezer -dried pollen microgel forms porous sponges. These could be processed like scaffolding for Tissue Engineering or to the tribe of bleeding or to absorb oil pollution.
The Cho team usually works with sunflower and Camellia pollen, which you buy as a bee pollen mixture, mainly from China. But they say that their alkaline hydrolysis process fits well with a large part of the plant species. Pollen is plentiful, adds Cho – for example, a single flower of the sunflower produces 25,000 to 67,000 grains every summer. In addition, it is easy to collect from bees in commercial beehives.
Pollen -based products still have some options before reaching the market, Ibrahim adds. The key is currently to predict challenges and develop sustainable solutions. In other biomaterials, researchers such as chitosan and cellulose work, a cancer part or a tree must be destroyed. In comparison, pollen is much less resource -intensive: “We don't destroy the plant,” he says. “We don't even destroy the flowers.”
This article originally appeared in Knowable magazineA non -profit publication that is committed to making scientific knowledge accessible. Register for the recognizable magazine newsletter.