Biologically self-assembled porous polymers

Porous materials play an important role in today's society. For a wide variety of industrial markets including filtration, aeration, sorbents, structural materials and sensors, porous materials are essential components. Therefore, there is a need to develop novel techniques that can produce improved porosity in materials at lower production costs. The use of biologically active agents during material processing can influence the structures of materials on the micro- or nano-level and could provide many potential improvements over existing porous materials processing techniques. In this paper, we report on the use of a novel technique to produce controlled porosity in polymer materials, by incorporating a biologically active agent. The biological agent chosen for demonstration of the process was a single cell fungus (a common example of which is yeast), but extension to other types of biological agents is evident from the results. Also, potential application of this technique to other materials system, including powdered metals, ceramics, and solution-derived materials (such as sol-gel systems) is discussed.