thumb|Biorock forming on rebar in [[seawater in the presence of a small electric current to form an electrified reef]] Biorock (also seacrete) is a cement-like engineering material formed when a small electric current is passed between underwater metal electrodes placed in seawater causing dissolved minerals to accrete onto the cathode to form a thick layer of limestone. This 'accretion process' can be used to create building materials or to create artificial 'electrified reefs' for the benefit of corals and other sea-life. Discovered by Wolf Hilbertz in 1976, biorock was protected by patents
thumb|Biorock forming on rebar in [[seawater in the presence of a small electric current to form an electrified reef]] Biorock (also seacrete) is a cement-like engineering material formed when a small electric current is passed between underwater metal electrodes placed in seawater causing dissolved minerals to accrete onto the cathode to form a thick layer of limestone. This 'accretion process' can be used to create building materials or to create artificial 'electrified reefs' for the benefit of corals and other sea-life. Discovered by Wolf Hilbertz in 1976, biorock was protected by patents and a trademark which have now expired.
== History == During the 1970s Professor Wolf Hilbertz, an architect by training, was studying seashells and reefs at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas. He was thinking about how humans could emulate the way coral grow. After preliminary work in 1975, in 1976 he discovered that by passing electric currents through salt water, over time a thick layer of various materials including limestone deposited on the cathode. Later experiments showed that the coating could thicken at the rate of 5 cm per year for as long as current flows.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).