Cited research: Nano Lett. doi:10.1021/nl100824d (2010)
Polymer nanofibres can be spun into free-standing, hollow cylinders that look as if they might have been shaped on a tiny pottery wheel. Ho-Young Kim at Seoul National University, L. Mahadevan at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and their co-workers used an electric field to tease a nanometre-scale jet of polyethylene oxide solution from a capillary tube. The jet dried in mid-air and, in less than a second, coiled up into a spool a few micrometres in diameter (pictured) as it hit a sharp stainless steel tip 2 millimetres below the capillary tube.
Such structures could be used in nanometre-scale magnets, bioscaffolds or nanochannels, the researchers suggest. R.V.N.
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Nanomanufacturing: Petite pottery. Nature 465, 528 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/465528d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/465528d