Researchers at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), working with collaborators, report a new biomaterial that gets stronger when exposed to water rather than breaking down. The chitosan-nickel composite, derived from the shells of crustaceans, treats water not as a threat but as a structural component, flipping one of the oldest assumptions about bio-based materials on its head. Published in Nature Communications on February 18, 2026, the peer-reviewed study suggests the material could compete with some conventional plastics in wet or humid environments where many bio-based alternatives struggle.
Unlike earlier attempts that focused on keeping water out, the new work reframes moisture as part of the solution. The research team reports that their material increases in tensile strength after immersion, remaining mechanically stable in conditions that would quickly degrade most biopolymers. If those results hold up under industrial testing, the composite could open the door to compostable packaging for beverages, components for medical or lab-use devices that must tolerate wet conditions, and some marine applications where plastic pollution is currently entrenched.
Why Bio-Based Materials Keep Losing to Plastic
The central problem with replacing petroleum-based plastics has never been a lack of candidates. Researchers have tested cellulose films, starch blends, and polylactic acid composites for decades. The bottleneck is water. As the study’s abstract puts it, water resistance is “one of the most exploited properties of synthetic materials” and simultaneously a limiting factor for the broader use of bio-based materials. A compostable cup that turns soggy in ten minutes or a biodegradable bag that tears in the rain simply cannot compete with polyethylene or PET in real-world conditions.
That gap has kept bioplastics confined to niche applications, mostly dry-goods packaging and single-use cutlery, where moisture contact is minimal. The new chitosan-nickel research attacks the problem at its root by turning water from a weakness into a performance advantage. Instead of coating a biological polymer with a waterproof shell or blending it with synthetic additives, the team coordinated chitosan, a derivative of chitin found in shellfish exoskeletons, with nickel ions in a process the authors describe as generating no waste. The result is a material that incorporates water molecules into its internal structure, gaining tensile strength rather than losing it.
How Chitosan and Nickel Ions Work Together
Chitosan on its own is cheap, abundant, and biodegradable, but it swells and weakens in humid conditions. The IBEC-led team solved this by introducing nickel ions that form coordination bonds with the chitosan polymer chains. When water enters the material, it does not disrupt those bonds. Instead, water molecules slot into the network and reinforce it, acting like mortar between bricks. The peer-reviewed study in Nature Communications describes these objects as “aquatically robust,” a term chosen to distinguish them from merely water-resistant coatings that eventually degrade once moisture finds a way in.
The process itself generates zero waste, an important detail for a material pitched as an environmental upgrade over plastics. Conventional bioplastic manufacturing often requires solvents, plasticizers, or energy-intensive drying steps that erode the green credentials of the final product. By contrast, the chitosan-nickel method uses the water already present during fabrication as part of the finished structure. An earlier preprint laid out the same coordination chemistry, and the final published paper confirms those initial findings held up through peer review. The IBEC team has described the approach as a shift inspired by nature, drawing parallels to aquatic organisms that thrive in constant water contact rather than fighting it.
Bioplastics Research Is Gaining Speed Elsewhere
The chitosan-nickel composite is not arriving in isolation. A separate line of research at Washington University in St. Louis has produced biodegradable packaging films built from layered cellulose nanofibers arranged in a structure inspired by the internal architecture of leaves, according to the university’s report. That team claims its films outperform common petrochemical plastics in mechanical strength, though the approach addresses a different slice of the problem: dry packaging rather than wet-environment durability. Their work underscores how structural design at the microscopic level can help compensate for some weaknesses of bio-derived polymers.
Other groups are expanding the palette of sustainable plastics in different directions. Taken together, these parallel efforts suggest that the field is converging on materials that can match plastics property by property, rather than asking consumers and manufacturers to accept inferior performance for the sake of sustainability. Meanwhile, another Nature Communications study on DNA-based hydrogels demonstrated recyclable bioplastics built from nucleic acids and polysaccharides, showing that even complex, information-carrying molecules can be repurposed as structural materials. Taken together, these parallel efforts suggest that the field is converging on materials that can match plastics property by property, rather than asking consumers and manufacturers to accept inferior performance for the sake of sustainability.
The Role of Preprints and Open Infrastructure
The trajectory of the chitosan-nickel work also highlights how modern scientific infrastructure is reshaping materials research. Before the IBEC study appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, the authors shared their results as a preprint on arXiv, giving the community early access to data and methods. That practice allows other labs to begin replication, critique, or extension months before formal publication, accelerating the pace at which promising materials can be validated or discarded. The fact that the core findings survived the transition from preprint to journal article suggests the water-strengthening effect held up through peer review, though independent replication and scale-up testing would still be needed.
Behind that rapid dissemination is a largely invisible ecosystem of servers, moderators, and governance structures. The preprint server that hosted the initial chitosan-nickel manuscript is sustained by a network of institutional members, as documented in its membership list, along with voluntary financial contributions from individuals and organizations who support the platform. Guidance on how researchers should format, submit, and revise manuscripts is codified in the site’s public help resources, while its overall mission and governance model are described in its own overview. For emerging fields like bioplastics, where iterative improvements and cross-disciplinary input are essential, this kind of open infrastructure can be as important as any single breakthrough material.
The Scaling Question No One Has Answered Yet
Every promising lab material faces the same harsh filter: can it be manufactured at industrial volumes, at competitive cost, fast enough to matter? The chitosan-nickel composite benefits from cheap, widely available starting ingredients. Chitin is the second most abundant natural polymer on Earth, generated as waste by the global seafood industry. Nickel, while a metal that requires mining, is used in small quantities for the coordination bonds. The zero-waste fabrication process avoids expensive solvents, which should help keep production costs down relative to other bioplastic methods that depend on purified enzymes or specialized feedstocks.
Still, no publicly available data from the IBEC team or its collaborators addresses long-term degradation rates in real-world aquatic environments, commercial production timelines, or regulatory approval pathways. The study demonstrates the material’s mechanical behavior in controlled laboratory conditions, and translating that into, say, a water bottle or a medical implant housing involves engineering challenges that peer-reviewed chemistry papers rarely tackle. Funding bodies and regulators have not yet issued statements about commercialization support for this specific material, a gap that will need to close before the composite can move from journal pages to factory floors. Until pilot plants, lifecycle assessments, and safety reviews catch up, the chitosan-nickel composite will remain a compelling proof of concept for water-strengthened bioplastics rather than an immediate replacement for the plastics that dominate oceans, landfills, and supply chains today.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
