NEWS

04 November 2026

Innovative polymer could give the manual toothbrush its first radical redesign in more than 1,000 years.

The history of the manual toothbrush has been traced back to the Tang Dynasty in China. Credit: Valentyna Yeltsova/Getty

Researchers at Peking University in Beijing have developed a battery-less brush that destroys bacteria by generating its own electrical charge, rather than relying on mechanical friction alone. The work was published in Science Advances on 4 November 1 .

Generating electricity from brushing is a “new twist on an old concept,” says Frank Scannapieco, a periodontist and microbiologist at the University of Buffalo in New York.…