Microbes in bioconcrete technology: exploring the fundamentals and state-of-the-art findings for advancing civil engineering

The bioconcrete technology on cementitious composites over the past years has brought us the application of microbes on concrete materials with self-healing ability. Certain microbes, such as bacteria, algae, and fungi, have been identified as able to enhance the strength of concrete and other properties, including durability, resistance, self-healing, and others. The key ability of those microbes is their capability to induce calcite biomineralization, which is also known as microbiologically induced calcium carbonate precipitation. This ability allows microbes to produce calcites under specific biochemical reactions comparable with the bonding material in cement concrete, thus enhancing concrete properties and healing microcracks before further propagation occurs. However, each microbe has its own characteristic that brings certain challenges and benefits to its application, considering the reactants, products, availability, survivability, sustainability, etc. Although many studies have been done in this field, the microbes, cultivations treatments, testing methods, and obtained outputs vary between one finding and another. This paper discloses both the fundamental and state-of-the-art bioconcrete findings for different types of microbes.