StCredZero writes with word of a research team from the University of Illinois who have developed a way to manufacture nanowires of any length from various materials. Not, unfortunately, carbon nanotubes, or we would be looking for news on space elevators soon. The process is analogous to drawing with a fountain pen — as liquid is drawn from a reservoir, a solvent (water or an organic) evaporates and the solute precipitates onto a substrate. The researchers have demonstrated a way to spin and wind a nanowire onto a spool; they’ve produced a coil of microfiber 850 nm in diameter and 40 cm long. Here’s the abstract from the journal Advanced Materials.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Entries (RSS)