In a world hooked on lithium, rare earth metals, and disposable power cells, a quiet revolution just emerged from a university lab in upstate New York—and it runs on stainless steel and bacteria.

At Binghamton University, Professor Seokheun “Sean” Choi and his team have built one of the most powerful bacteria-based biobatteries to date. But the breakthrough didn’t come from exotic materials or billion-dollar backing. It came from teaming up with the guy downstairs.

Enter Assistant Professor Dehao Liu, a laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) specialist. Together, the duo fused biology with cutting-edge 3D metal printing to create a stackable, reusable battery powered by endospores—hardy microbial survivors that don’t need lithium, won’t explode, and don’t poison the earth when discarded.

The secret? Custom-built stainless-steel anodes with nanoscale precision. Traditional mesh just couldn’t offer the tailored surfaces bacteria need to thrive. But with LPBF, the team printed exact geometries that maximized surface area, controlled porosity, and allowed for optimal bacterial growth—and power output.

The result: a modular, Lego-like system where six biobattery units generated nearly a milliwatt of power—enough to run a small LCD screen. More impressively, the system is reusable. After use, the bacteria can be cleaned off, and the components perform just as well in subsequent runs.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s bacteria, stainless steel, and smart engineering—doing what lithium can’t: delivering power without depletion, pollution, or geopolitical entanglement.

And this is just the beginning. The Binghamton team is now working on a unified printing process for the entire battery and developing a power management system to regulate charging and discharging—like solar panels, but microbial.

Forget mining batteries from the earth. The next generation of power might be growing in a petri dish, engineered on a printer, and stacked in your desk drawer.

Welcome to the age of living energy.