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Electrodes made from bread could replace metal conductors

Wholemeal bread can be shaped into carbon electrodes that could replace traditional metal conductors in electrical devices

By James Dinneen

19 February 2025

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

David Bujdos holds a bread-based electrode

Liz Palmer

Old pieces of bread can be transformed into precisely shaped electrodes using water and heat. The bread-based components could replace metal electrodes in devices while reducing the hundreds of tonnes of bread wasted daily.

“Bread has all sorts of stuff in it, such as starch, protein and water,” says David Bujdos at the University of Pennsylvania. “You can just heat it at a really high temperature without oxygen and you get the carbon backbone out of that.”

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