In a quiet corner of Switzerland, researchers have stopped treating metal like something to be melted and poured, and started treating it like something that can be grown. Instead of blasting powders with lasers or extruding molten alloys, they are coaxing intricate metallic parts to emerge from soft hydrogels, creating structures that early tests suggest are dramatically stronger than conventional 3D printed metal.
The shift sounds almost biological, but it is rooted in materials science and precision optics rather than genetics. By rethinking how metal parts take shape at the microscopic level, these teams are opening a path to components that are lighter, tougher, and more complex than what today’s factories can routinely deliver, with implications for everything from electric cars to medical implants.
From molten metal to “grown” structures
For decades, metal manufacturing has revolved around heat: smelting, casting, forging, and more recently, laser-based 3D printing that fuses powders into solid parts. The new work coming out of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, or EPFL, flips that script by starting with a hydrogel, a soft, water rich material that can be shaped with light and then transformed into metal. Researchers at EPFL in Switzerland have shown that rather than printing with molten metal, they can grow ultra strong metallic structures from a hydrogel scaffold, turning a squishy template into a dense, load bearing part once it is infused with metal and processed.
In practical terms, this means the metal is not sprayed or melted into place layer by layer, but instead forms within a predesigned gel that already encodes the final geometry. The approach, highlighted in work shared by Researchers at EPFL in Switzerland, allows the team to sidestep some of the thermal stresses and defects that plague traditional metal printing, because the metal is introduced and consolidated after the shape is defined, not while it is being drawn in mid air by a laser.
The technique behind metal “growth”
At the heart of this advance is a method borrowed from polymer 3D printing and pushed into a new domain. Swiss researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne are using a technique known as vat photopolymerization, where light selectively solidifies a liquid or gel into a precise 3D pattern. In their setup, the hydrogel is patterned first, creating a detailed negative of the final part, and only then is it loaded with metal precursors that will eventually become a solid metallic network.
This sequence matters, because it separates the delicate task of shaping from the more violent step of densifying metal. By defining the geometry in a calm, low temperature environment and then converting the gel into metal afterward, the team can achieve features and internal channels that are difficult to maintain when a laser is constantly melting and resolidifying material. The result, described in reports on a 3D Printing Revolution, is a process that feels closer to cultivating a structure than machining it, even though it is still firmly grounded in physics and chemistry rather than biology.
Why “grown” metal can be 20 times stronger
The most eye catching claim around this work is not just that metal can be grown, but that the resulting parts can be up to 20 times stronger than those made with conventional 3D printing. That performance leap comes from how the microstructure forms when metal is introduced into a preorganized hydrogel, rather than being fused from loose powder. Scientists at EPFL have reimagined 3D printing by turning simple hydrogels into tough metals and ceramics, and early measurements indicate that the resulting components can outperform standard printed alloys by a factor of twenty in strength tests.
In online discussions, that figure has already become a rallying point for enthusiasts who see the method as a step change rather than an incremental tweak. Posts highlighting how Scientists just GREW metal parts instead of printing them, and how the results are 20x stronger, frame the technique as a potential replacement for some of the most demanding applications in aerospace and energy. The excitement is not just about raw numbers, but about the idea that a fundamentally different pathway to forming metal can unlock properties that were previously out of reach, as highlighted in one widely shared thread where Scientists just GREW metal parts and argued that this could soon transform manufacturing at scale.
Inside the EPFL breakthrough
To understand why this work is attracting so much attention, it helps to look more closely at the institution driving it. Researchers at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) have developed a method that treats the hydrogel as a programmable sponge, one that can be filled with metal ions or particles and then converted into a continuous metallic body. Their technique carefully controls when and how the metal is introduced, so the final structure is grown within the gel rather than printed in its final form, which is a departure from the usual approach where metal is printed rather than before it is fully formed.
This inversion of the usual sequence gives the EPFL team a different set of knobs to turn. Instead of tuning laser power and scan speed, they can adjust gel composition, light exposure, and loading conditions to influence how the metal network develops. Reports describing how Researchers at EPFL have built this process emphasize that the method is still in the research phase, but the underlying concept, growing metals within a preformed template, is robust enough that industrial partners are already watching closely.
Hydrogels, copper, and the 79% loading milestone
One of the most striking technical achievements in this line of work is how much metal the hydrogels can carry without collapsing or shrinking uncontrollably. The EPFL team has progressively loaded hydrogels with up to 79% copper, iron, and silver, a figure that would normally spell disaster for a soft, water based material. By carefully balancing the gel chemistry and the way the metal is introduced, they have managed to keep the shape stable while packing in enough metal to make the final part dense and functional.
That 79% threshold is not just a curiosity, it is a key enabler for real world applications. With such high loading, the converted parts can behave like true metallic components rather than fragile composites, which is essential if they are to replace machined steel brackets in a wind turbine or copper heat exchangers in a data center. Coverage of how The team has progressively loaded these hydrogels with copper, iron, and silver also notes that more materials are possible, hinting at a future where the same framework could host nickel based superalloys or even exotic metals tailored for quantum devices.
From lab curiosity to industrial tool
For now, growing metal in a lab hydrogel is still a controlled experiment, but the trajectory points toward industrial relevance. Scientists at EPFL have already demonstrated that their process can produce not only metals but also ceramics, which opens the door to hybrid parts that combine electrical conductivity with thermal resistance or biocompatibility. Their method of turning simple hydrogels into tough metals and ceramics is being positioned as a way to build complex energy and biomedical devices, where internal channels, porous regions, and dense load bearing sections must coexist in a single component.
That versatility is what could eventually pull the technique out of the lab and into factories that make battery housings, orthopedic implants, or intricate cooling plates for high performance computing. Reports describing how Scientists at EPFL have reimagined 3D printing emphasize that the same basic workflow can be tuned for different materials, which is exactly what industrial engineers look for when they evaluate whether a new process can be slotted into existing production lines or whether it demands an entirely new ecosystem.
Why this matters for cars, planes, and medical devices
If grown metal parts can reliably deliver 20 times the strength of conventional printed components, the implications for transportation and healthcare are substantial. In automotive engineering, where every kilogram shaved from a chassis translates into better range for an electric vehicle, stronger metals could allow thinner, lighter brackets and crash structures without sacrificing safety. In aerospace, where fatigue and microcracks are constant worries, a more uniform microstructure grown within a hydrogel template could reduce the risk of catastrophic failure in critical parts.
Medical devices stand to benefit in a different way. The ability to sculpt intricate internal geometries in a hydrogel before converting it to metal or ceramic could enable implants that better match the stiffness of bone, or stents with flow channels tailored to a specific patient’s anatomy. The early demonstrations of ultra strong metallic structures grown from a hydrogel, highlighted in coverage that notes how Rather than printing with molten metal the team is growing these parts, suggest that the technique is particularly well suited to such customized, high value components where performance gains justify the complexity of the process.
The cultural moment: from niche lab work to viral fascination
Beyond the technical details, there is a cultural story unfolding around this research. The idea that metal can be grown instead of forged or printed taps into a broader fascination with materials that behave more like living systems, even when the underlying science is purely inorganic. Social media posts that frame the work with phrases like Nov, Rather and Nov, Scientists, GREW, And the have helped propel it from specialist conferences into mainstream feeds, where the contrast between soft hydrogels and hard metal resonates with audiences who might never read a materials science paper.
I see that reaction as a sign that the public is ready to engage with a more nuanced view of manufacturing, one where the boundaries between biology inspired processes and traditional engineering start to blur. When people share clips of Nov, Printing Revolution, Scientists Can Now, Grow, Metal or discuss Oct, Scientists Develop New Method, Grow, Metals, they are not just passing along a curiosity, they are participating in a shift in how we imagine the future of making things. The fact that these phrases, tied to specific reports and demonstrations, have become shorthand for a whole class of techniques suggests that grown metal is likely to remain part of the conversation as the technology matures.
What comes next for grown metals
The road from lab scale hydrogel experiments to full scale industrial adoption is long, and there are still unverified based on available sources aspects of cost, throughput, and reliability that will determine how widely this method spreads. Scaling vat photopolymerization to produce large, dense metal parts at the speed and price that automotive or aerospace manufacturers demand is a nontrivial challenge, and the process will have to prove itself not just in headline strength metrics but in fatigue life, corrosion resistance, and quality control.
Yet the core insight, that metals and ceramics can be grown within a preformed hydrogel template to achieve properties and geometries that conventional 3D printing struggles to match, is already reshaping how engineers think about design. As more groups build on the foundation laid by EPFL and refine the chemistry, optics, and post processing, I expect grown metals to move from a striking laboratory demonstration to a practical tool in the manufacturing toolbox, one that quietly underpins the next generation of cars, planes, and medical devices even if most people never see the hydrogels that made them possible.
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