Concrete powered homes?! Sounds crazy! Or does it?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Renewable energy demand keeps growing. The challenge is finding cheap and abundant materials.
Qi Luo and team at Aarhus University in Denmark have developed cement infused with energy-producing bacteria.
The bacteria quickly store and release electrical energy through a connected bacterial network, making them supercapacitors!
Supercapacitors are similar to lithium-ion batteries, but charge and release power in seconds.
As the bacteria lose efficiency, they can be restored to eighty percent of their function with a nutrient solution.
This cement offers nearly eighty percent higher energy than lithium-ion supercapacitors.
Brilliant!
Reference: Luo, Q., Li, Z., Li, Y., & Petrov, M. (2025). Living microbial cement supercapacitors with Reactivatable Energy Storage. Cell Reports Physical Science, 6(9), 102810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrp.2025.102810