Science
News: Scientists have spun a multitude of high-tech
materials into bundles of superfine nanowires that are more
than 1000 meters long, writes Rachel Ehrenberg for
Science News. Although trimming big, bulky materials
down to nanosize has proven difficult in the past, Mehmet
Bayindir of the Institute of Materials Science and
Nanotechnology at Bilkent University in Turkey and colleagues
have succeeded in doing so with a solid rod of material wrapped
in polymer. They heated the rod, drew it out in a long
micrometers-thick thread, cut that into 15-cm lengths,
consolidated the lengths into a bundle, and heated and spun
that into even finer thread. Not only are the wires they
produced exceedingly long, they are also homogeneous. The new
technique, reported
online
in
Nature Materials, produces uniform, orderly arrays of
gossamer-thin materials that could have broad use in sensors,
energy-harvesting devices, and medical diagnostics.
